Headteacher and co-Founder of Rethink Food, Nathan Atkinson joins Kate to discuss the crucial role education plays in delivering sustainability on a global scale.
Education has a vital role to play in meeting every one of the UN's 17 SDGs. To solve an issue, first you must understand it and education gives all humans the foundation on which to build knowledge, and, via curiosity, learn and progress.
But what about education itself? Are people - young and old - around the world getting the opportunities to learn that they deserve? Are they even getting their basic needs met to be in a position to start learning?
SDG 4 is… QUALITY EDUCATION - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Expert guest Nathan Atkinson has a stellar career in education and sustainability is a huge part of his purpose and approach. He's a richly experienced Headteacher who is also co-founder of Rethink Food, which aims to deliver 10 million hours of education in support of improved food security.
In this episode, Kate and Nathan discuss...
The global context. What is the nature of the challenge to improve the current situation where hundreds of millions of young people don't get basic levels of education. Where are the inequalities, what's the direction of travel and how can these macro level problems be addressed? Nathan has experience of working with teachers across the world and is able to bring to life the vast variety of contexts, approaches and solutions that are out there.
A national and regional focus. What particular challenges does the UK face? Are teachers overwhelmed? What about funding levels? How do we address a growing mental health crisis in young people that drastically affects their education and future prospects? Nathan describes the in-school experiences that inspired him to co-found Rethink Food and explains how food is the perfect vehicle to address basic "ready-to-learn" needs plus provides a clear path to explore and ingrain sustainability.
Finally Nathan and Kate bring the conversation to a practical focus. What can be done to actually deliver SDG 4 at global, national and regional scales? Plus, how can we help? What one thing can we stop doing, and what one thing can we start doing that will make a real positive difference, right now?
To find about more about Rethink Food, visit rethinkfood.co.uk
Welcome to The Seventeen. This is a podcast dedicated to sustainability. It's structured around the UN's 17 sustainable development goals. Or SDGs. Together, they represent a plan to protect the future of the planet. I'm Kate Hutchinson and I'm the founder of Yorkshire Sustainability Festival. My goal is to help the UK's regions and business communities play their part in delivering a sustainable future.
Each episode of this podcast focuses on one individual UN Sustainable Development Goal. And every time I'll be joined by a different expert whose experience and knowledge relates to that goal. In this episode, we're tackling goal four, which is quality education, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Our guest has a stellar career in education and sustainability is a key part of his purpose and approach. Nathan Atkinson is a vastly experienced head teacher. who is co founder of Rethink Food, which aims to deliver 10 million hours of education in support of improved food security. Nathan, welcome to The 17.
Hello, thank you, and it's great to be here today.
Thank you for joining us. So, Nathan, I've got some questions to kick us off. At the most basic level, what difference does education, or lack of it, make? Make people's lives.
I think let's try and look positively on it. So what does it add? It empowers people, it gives them opportunities, it gives them life chances, and those chances to improve, to develop, to live a quality life.
So by giving young people education at a young age, so those, those early years, those primary, then into secondary. It gives people opportunity, but looking beyond that, lifelong learners, I think we're in an age where there's so much information that's readily available to us to keep learning. I think that in the last sort of 12 months, my own personal learning curve has, has continued to develop and has probably accelerated greater than it's ever been.
So I think all the time we can give people the opportunity to learn. So long as they're learning accurate, factual information, it gives people a chance to live a more fulfilled and purposeful life.
How does your organization, Rethink Food, look to harness the power of education?
Well, the reason we do what we do at Rethink Food began in education whilst I was in school as a head teacher.
So an incident happened in my school and I managed to track that back, that it was down to children arriving at school hungry. One of my beliefs is that all behavior is a form of communication. So when there was all sorts of things kicking off one dinnertime, I sat down with some of the young people and said, I can't imagine what it must feel like to be so angry that you've done this, this, this and this.
And one of the young people pointed to his stomach, he said, it hurts here. I've been off school for a full week and I've not eaten anything warm. And today you've given me more sandwiches and I'm hungry. And at that point I went back to my office and I wrote the word hunger. On my office wall, and I vow to remove hunger as a barrier to learning, because you can have the best teachers, the best resources, the best provision, the best support, but if the children, which they are doing, are arriving at school hungry, they can't engage effectively in, learning.
education when their mind's thinking about when they're gonna get something to eat. So we started off just feeding young people, providing food, but we looked beyond that and started to think about how do we empower these young people? How do we further educate? So alongside the food, we've got We started to include educational resources.
And one of the first resources that we created was around the 17 SDGs. I was at a conference and there was the SDG logo, and I wrote the word food in the middle and started to see how we could teach and we could deliver the goals through the medium of food. And what that did was incredible things. It, it.
It removed the stigma of hunger, it removed the stigma of food insecurity, and over time we started talking about eating to save the planet. And what it did, it created agency in the young people, it empowered them, and instead of eating because they were hungry or eating for, because they were going to be healthy, thinking about nutrition, they started to thinking about eating to save the planet.
So when you think about the amount of water that goes in to the production of a chocolate bar, we didn't say stop eating chocolate. We said, how could you save water? And the young people made that connection that actually, if we don't bring chocolate bars in our lunch boxes for the next two or three weeks, we can say, contribute to saving water.
And it's not as simple as that. But when we broke it down to that for, seven and eight year olds. They're excited by it, so they were making changes and imagine on social media for school just said guys were banning chocolate and lunchboxes. They'd be uproar. Oh, the Daily Mail would be outside immediately.
They would be, it would be clickbait galore, but actually when the young people were driving a campaign to save water and one of the actions that they were going to take was to not bring chocolate in their lunch boxes. It was so positive. As an educator, one of my passions is around creative curriculum and creating authentic learning opportunities for for young people.
So they're learning in such an engaging way for a greater purpose that they're having so much fun. fun, that they don't realize they're learning. But then when you evaluate those programs and you start to unpick kind of the progress, and the achievements that have been made by the young people, it's absolutely incredible.
So something that started off as that issue of hunger, which is also one of the United Nations SDGs. We did, we decided to address that through quality education. and But not traditional education, we talk about creating a revolution in food education, because we're not just about cooking, we're not just about putting meals together, it's about children understanding that wider food system, so understanding seasonality, understanding the food miles, where food has come from, when you break down the SDG of quality education.
Part one of the objectives is to improve health education, and that's what's absolutely essential. As a country, we have one of the most rapidly increasing rates of obesity. And again, you say, well, that's now, but looking down the line, the amount of money that that's going to cost our health service. When we talk about obesity, again, it's clickbait, but it's easy to blame people for obesity.
Well, they're lazy people, or they're this, or they're that. This is a complex issue, and we find that over time, history has taught us that These complex issues are solved by improved education, by making sure that we've got quality education and empowering people in this way is, is in my opinion, the part of the solution.
I completely agree with you. I think it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs, isn't it? At the end of the day, you can't get to self actualization if you're concentrating on the fact that you literally can't think because you're so hungry. There's a lot more that's coming out in the press nowadays about ultra processed foods and the impact of ultra processed foods on, you know, our bodies, our health.
But I think, you know, just in my own experience, I was banned from eating bread as a child because it used to make my attitude appalling, right? It used to make me really badly behaved, right? What we discovered in my adult years was that I'm gluten intolerant. And I should never have been eating gluten.
And now if I am accidentally gluten, I'm in a foul mood. That's one of my, my symptoms. And actually I would never have put those, those two things together because we don't understand food. We are so disconnected from the food cycle. I was talking to Pam Walhurst, who's the founder of Incredible Edible, who I absolutely adore.
She's a total powerhouse. And one of the things she was saying to me was, kids in Todmorden, where she founded Incredible Edible, thought that cucumbers were grown with plastic on them. It's crazy to me that we, we have become so disconnected from the cycle of nature and the cycle of, of food. Ultimately, ultra processed food is what is all over our, our shops, and it's cheaper to buy ultra processed food.
then it is to buy healthy food and to learn how to cook and all the rest of it. And we're time poor now because families are working, you know, both parents are working and often working more than one job if you're, if they're in low income households. And I think a lot of it can be solved when it comes to quality education.
So I think that's a really interesting approach that you're taking. So let's dive into the UN sustainability goal number four, quality education, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Here are some of the facts about the current situation according to UN statistics.
Without extra measures, by 2030, 300 million students will lack basic numeracy and literacy skills. In a study of 104 countries around the world, 80 percent had suffered learning losses due to the pandemic. Only 17 percent of countries in the world are on track to meet the target of universal secondary education for all.
Low income countries face a combined 100 billion shortfall in education funding. So Nathan, how big is the overall global challenge here?
Well, I think those statistics speak for themselves and the challenge is huge and at times may seem completely unachievable. I've been really fortunate to connect with schools globally, physically been able to travel and visit some of them.
In 2012, I got the opportunity to visit China and spent some time visiting schools and The complete range of educational experiences that young people were getting within one city in China was incredible. We spent time in schools that had 90 children in one class that were being taught and, well, they were being delivered a curriculum almost in a rote fashion versus on the other side of the city, an experimental school that had coffee classrooms, tea classrooms, um, the most incredible sporting opportunities and this is in one city and if you imagine how the range of quality of education goes in terms of provision, so first of all the physical space that you've got to learn in and then the quality of resources and then the quality of the teaching and the teacher training that's gone into that.
So the diversity is absolutely huge and I think one thing that really drives that inequality is funding. The statistics that you said about developing countries, or a different way of looking at those, is accelerating countries, so countries that are really working hard to improve. And within a lot of those countries, there are so many different challenges that are faced.
So, young people are quite often removed from education to, to work and to earn. So that's driven by the financial needs of families. So those opportunities are taken away from those young people because of traditions and family setups and whether it's need to, to work on their own land or physically go out to work.
So that opportunity is being removed from young people because of the financial dependency of their families. people having to travel miles upon miles to go to school. But as well as the young people that are having to travel these miles to go to school, the teachers are also traveling a long way. In 2017, I was named as one of the finalists, the top 50 global teacher prize winners.
And that's given me an amazing opportunity to connect with teachers globally. I've been invited to be a judge on the early stages of the assessment for sort of future years, so I've had the chance to read applications from teachers right the way across the world, and just saying that, the, the hairs on my arms and goosebumps all over my body because these are tear jerking moments that you're reading about the challenges that, that are faced you.
by young people and I was fortunate to get this chance pre and post pandemic, so to see the challenges now that our young people are facing, that schools are facing, is just incredible. Attendance in school is really important. young people turning up to school every day. Recently in the news, there have been initiatives put in place to punish families for not attending.
I find that quite a low level intervention, because, again, going back to what I said at the start, all behavior is a form of communication, so if you're not attending school, why are you not attending school? For me, when I was in school, on a rainy day, we would see attendance go down. We unpicked that, and some children didn't have Shoes without holes in.
And this is in, in England, in a wealthy city. They didn't have the right footwear, or they didn't have coats to wear, so they just wouldn't come to school on those days. Not because they didn't want to, but because of poverty, because of deprivation, they weren't able to attend school. So when you multiply that factor, by degrees of poverty in developing countries, then the challenges are even greater.
And after the pandemic, attendance has fallen off a cliff because of some behaviors that have been ingrained during those isolated periods of working from home. So finding the motivation, imagine you're a young person who's the age of 14 during the pandemic, when you might have found it hard to go to school anyway, on those days, and it would have been easier for you to stay at home.
Somebody said, you stay at home. You don't have to go. The pathways and the reassurance that that gave many people was, was off the scale, but now breaking it when it was time to go back to school. If you didn't enjoy school, if you felt vulnerable at school, if you didn't feel safe at school, this was great.
But now we're trying to get those young people back into school and. the mental health crisis that we are facing and will continue to face of children and young people of a particular age. Some young people will have had the most amazing experience because they'll be supported through effective home learning.
And again, that comes down to inequalities and that not everybody is on a level playing field. And then we have the funding issues that come with it. So countries have spent. billions and billions of pounds holding up their economy during the pandemic. And now we see that funding is squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
And when it's interesting because we're talking globally and thinking worst case scenario in developing countries, but actually these challenges are what we're facing here in England, and with a funding crisis, with resources, with retention of teachers. Some really creative solutions in developing countries are to make use of expertise and skills within the surrounding areas, so people might not necessarily always be highly trained teachers, but I do think that's something that we have to aspire to and we have to have really high quality teacher training and that has to be equitable across the, across the globe.
Teacher training but also teacher retention. There's attendance issues at school and then there's the provision that they're getting. Are they in a class of 90 plus or are they in a small school where there's only 16 children in the class. That's not equitable. How do we, how do we address that? And it's a huge, huge challenge.
One that we're not ever going to solve overnight, but having the SDG goal in place and 2030 is rapidly approaching. I think some of those targets will be revisited, but I would say not swept under the carpet because they have to, have to be in place to support the our young people, our future generations and our lifelong learners.
So, we've started to dig into what's happening in the UK scene there, but let's dig into that in a little bit more detail. What's going on and what are the biggest challenges that we're facing in education in the UK right now and how can we go about solving them?
Teacher burnout, teachers are exhausted, And again, it's clickbait.
Wow, they have loads of holidays, teachers. They only start at nine o'clock and they're gone by half three at the end of the day. There's a hashtag, teachers matter. And they definitely do. Wholeheartedly, they matter. And we have to make sure that they're not burnt out, that they're not driven out of the profession because of that exhaustion and absolute desperation.
I think that teaching is a way of life. It's a way of being. It's something that is, is within you, making the difference to the lives of, of young people and often eradicating many social injustices through your classroom, through those one to one opportunities that you have with young people. And we have to make sure that those opportunities and those great people aren't lost from our system.
And. post pandemic there's increased focus, and rightly so, on reading, writing, and maths. But what we have to make sure is that our young people don't get burnt out, that they develop a love of learning, and we can understand what meets their needs educationally rather than just being driven to meet government standards because it says so, because they can then use that in future elections to say, we did this, this, this for education.
But if you've got teachers on their knees, you've got retention crisis, recruitment crisis in the first place. And this is not just in education. We're seeing this across many disciplines. different areas. But that's why education is important in the first place because we're educating our teachers of the future, health care workers of the future, every single job that needs doing, innovation of the future, jobs that we don't even know that exist for the future.
And if your, your example of a teacher is somebody who's exhausted, who is under pressure, you're not going to get the best from them as a young person.
One of the things I've noticed with like, hearing my parents talk about it over the last 15 years, particularly, is this move away from the creative curriculum.
My dad, who was a very, very successful head teacher, and what he says is like, when he was a young teacher, if a fire engine drove past, he'd have all the kids at the window immediately, kids look at this, you know, getting them excited. And then they would sit and have a about, you know, what the point of fire engines, blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's no opportunity now to do that at all, because everything is so rigid, so focused. You have to meet this exam criteria and you have to, you know, these are the goals that you have to meet and there's no flexibility in it whatsoever. And people have really moved away from that creative curriculum.
And that is, I would say, like one of the reasons, you know, I'm one of, I've got two brothers. We, we come from a long line of, of teachers and headteachers and none of us have gone into education. And why have none of us gone into education even though it's in our blood? Because it looks like hell on earth.
Like, that's why. That's honestly why. And it looks really, really, really difficult.
I think social media has been the downfall in many ways because you've got criticise people publicly. Classes have their own WhatsApp groups as parents, which is quite a toxic Ugh, horrific. It can be positive. But it can equally be very toxic.
So, technology in many ways has contributed to this downfall. The introduction of things like ClassDojo where teachers can be constantly contacted 24 hours a day is unrealistic and it shouldn't be the case that The people you can have access to a teacher 24 hours a day because that teacher needs their downtime, needs their personal time and can't be attacked 24 7 for various different kind of situations.
So, I think there are huge challenges that we face there. And then going back to the creative curriculum, I think that the word that kind of underpins that is curiosity. Young people are so curious, and we have to harness that curiosity. Trying to go different routes to places so I'll see different things.
Getting lost, coming here, I got lost on the way here today and found this amazing place, like, well, what's that all about? Looking at finding out about things and, and not just having this prescriptive route to a certain place. And not too many years gone by, that, Those creative opportunities were there, and there are some amazing places that are truly creative and project based learning.
So there's a place in America called High Tech High, which very much drives project based learning. But it's not, oh, what we're going to do today kind of thing. It's planned. It's considered. There's progression. There's differentiation. But it really drives our project based learning and and that model was adopted by a school in Doncaster called XP Which is a free school and the curriculum there is around project based learning So it might be the case of we're going to produce a book this term I mean, it's going to be a celebration event where we have a book launch But to be able to write that book to be able to have that book launch You've got to go right the way back to basics of the book research, of learning, of being able to write, of being able to use a computer, of being able to coordinate an event, to invite people, to have conversations.
I worry about communication skills and the reliance on technology. It makes for more rapid communication, but it devalues in the face to face. We have to realize that these skills, and people are being de skilled in some senses because of technology. So I think curiosity is super important. Young people are born with it.
We have to harness it, not suppress it. Why don't you find out? Why don't you invest that time? We live in an age of instant gratification Everything you want and that instant gratification, whether it's through likes on Instagram, TikTok, people are being driven on that instant gratification and it's removing many of the learning processes and the learning journey and the scaffolding of what truly effective learning is, which has then falls on the teacher to be able to have to put those building blocks of learning in place.
As founder of Yorkshire Sustainability Festival, I'm passionate about what happens at a regional level. So what's happening regionally that gives you cause for optimism?
I'm certainly a hopeful person, optimistic, and we wouldn't do what we were doing if we weren't because we're curious. constantly trying to engage with schools, and this year I've been into three schools and had an amazing experience seeing young people engaged in our program.
One of our partner schools, Morley Victoria, that we've been working with for a number of different years, they got an outstanding Ofsted inspection as a local authority school, which is absolutely incredible. To retain an outstanding status is no mean feat, but being in that school, It feels like a natural thing.
It's not an artificial, forced, rote learning, children operating as robots almost. It's an authentic experience and seeing how an outstanding school has adopted our program is incredible because it's embedded in what they do. It's through the pastoral support, through the availability and accessibility of food.
But then we've got young people who uh, advocates and they're rethinkers within their schools. They have their own committee. It was World Day of Social Injustice recently, and we'd created an assembly for, for schools, and we went into a local lead school, St. Philip's, and that was a brilliant experience.
The engagement of the young people, the calmness of the school. I was stood in a corridor waiting to go into the assembly hall, and there's a map of the world. and there's a little sticker where the school is on there, then you've got a map of Europe, and then you've got the sticker, then you've got a map of Yorkshire, and again, and then you've got a map of Leeds, and just seeing how that school positioning itself globally and locally is massively reassuring.
Over time, we've worked with schools on the sustainable development goals. And you go back into those schools and they've got displays with the SDGs on them. And that's incredible because when you highlight these two schools, we've seen the SDGs embedded as part of the curriculum where schools have gone off and really run with it.
Locally, seeing some amazing collaboration. between schools, and that's not schools that are all part of one multi academy trust, but schools that are coming together, are working together, are supporting each other, are learning from each other, and not a closed off shop. The move to multi academy trust meant that the local authority, that was such a rich source of support and provision, has essentially gone.
It can never, in my opinion, go back. I think that the model has now shifted completely. So see some great people in education collaborating and opening their doors and say, Come and learn from us, but equally I want to learn from you. And we're going to a conference on Friday with part of that network.
I'm going to learn from people, to listen to conversations that people are having around it. So lots of hopefulness. There's huge challenge. because there's increasing deprivation and vulnerability of young people through the cost of living crisis, through the financial constraints on schools and the cuts in budgets and the challenges that are faced.
But there are so many green shoots and although we can be aspirational, we have to be realistic that not everybody's going to be CEO, not everybody's going to be a founder. everybody will have their pathway and their pathway is important and relative to them and valued and celebrating successes at levels, at different levels.
But having said that, also realizing that you're going to fail in life as well. It's not always going to be successes, it's not Failure
is really good for you. It is. Failure is really, really, really good for you. It's massively underrated. I can't, I mean, I've got to have so many stories of where I feel like I'm going to get into them now.
If you learn from it. Yes, that's exactly what it's all about. It's about being able to pick yourself back up. And it's about the resilience that you get from that failure, isn't it, and that moment of, and it's, you know, you were talking earlier about, um, immediate gratification and it was making me think about, you know, my parents taught me growing up about delayed gratification and the importance of delayed gratification and how working really hard today so that you get a great exam result in the summer and then you would be in a position to go to a good university.
And that was the path and that was what we talked about because I remember having a very interesting experience when I was at school. I would have been 15, so I'd been year, year 10, and we had Sheffield Hallam come in to talk to students about going to university, and we moved all the desks. room. What they said to us was stand in this corner of the room if you are, you know, the left hand side of the room if you are definitely going to university.
Stand to the right. If you might go to university and stand on the back wall. If you absolutely don't want to go to university, and this is a class of 32 students in a very poor area of Barnsley that I grew up in. 23 percent of our year passed five GCSEs including English and math. And they Most of the year group stood against the back wall of I do not want to go to university, I have no interest whatsoever.
There were probably about six people who stood in the maybe corner, and I was the only person who stood in the I'm definitely going to university camp. And I was not the most intelligent person in that room. But there was this mindset. I'm not sure that education is for me. And university is not the path for everyone, don't get me wrong, at all.
And you're absolutely right, not everybody can be the CEO, not everybody can be the founder. But everybody has a role to perform in their community. And everybody's role should be valued. We do not have a meritocratic society, so it is not a case in the UK anymore that if you work really hard, you can meet your goals.
your ambition, whatever that ambition might be, that ambition will look differently to everyone. And I think we can start to make impact on that at a regional level, and then it will go national. You know, that's the approach we're taking with, with Yorkshire Sustainability Festival. It's about creating something that is really exciting for people to rally behind, for people to see what the opportunity is.
And then we will use that voice to amplify what that is. our national opportunity is.
Recognizing the change in those regions as well through diversity, through change in demographics, I think that Again, there are a lot of traditional areas still that are quite resistant to certain ways of being, ways of learning, and I think over time it's about exploring, like you say, about that sustainability, wider view of it in terms of how we're going to improve and develop and hopefully be less polarized as well and bringing people together for something that is a shared vision, a shared purpose, and working together on something.
It's interesting that the UN stats highlight the impact of the pandemic. Is there a global generation that will be adversely affected due to their education being interrupted by COVID?
Yes, 100%. Absolutely nailed on. And I think that our National Health Service isn't well enough equipped to deal with this because this is a mental health crisis and there isn't the support for, for our young people.
It's dead end after dead end after dead end. And if you haven't got a supportive family network behind you, it's damned hard to get that support that you need. And that is because of the pandemic. It's because of the vulnerability of our young people. And we haven't got a provision that can support these kids, these young people, and it's heartbreaking.
People are going to doctors and asking for diagnosis, asking for medication. Yeah, that's fine, but it's a two year waiting list. And two years of these people's lives that are essential to their development, that they're missing out on, and They're viewed, they are viewed as failing these kids, and it's not, it's circumstances, but it's individuality, and I think the neurodiversity that has been exposed or accelerated in young people because of the isolation.
because of not spending time with peers, missing out on developing your social skills. The gap has just got so big and the provision and support, and it's been pushed onto schools. So it's all right. Just go on MindMate. Well, it's a computer program. that an already busy teaching assistant, and I'm not devaluing the role of a teaching assistant, but they, these teaching assistants haven't been trained as mental health first aiders, as mental health experts.
They are doing their best with a computer program and facilitating a computer program and yet again removing the personal element that is probably needed to reconnect these pathways to develop the plasticity of the brain, which we know is possible. And we can develop and work on that plasticity of the brain and connect those pathways that are needed to support.
There will always be, you're not going to cure people, but society at a level expects that, Oh, you're all right now. No, I'm never going to be all right. I'm just finding my pathway and finding my way. But I think that the support from the NHS, and that's not a criticism of the NHS, it's a criticism of the funding, of the capacity to be able to meet this need.
And I worry that it might be too late for some of our young people if funding ever does catch up, because increased diagnosis means we need to increase support for the provision. Not seeing it as a get out or somebody moaning about something. It's a genuine, real life thing for, for young people. I think we, we have to continue to develop that and whether that comes into schools more, but then it's another thing for schools to have to deal with.
If schools are funded to deal with it, that's great. Get mental health experts working in school. That's where the biggest issue is, is the funding, isn't it?
Ultimately, the fund, the schools are not being funded appropriately in order to be able to deal with this need. From your experience as a head teacher and now as the co founder of Rethink Food, what works?
And what can we do more of? What happens when education is done right?
I think that understanding The young people taking time to understand them as individuals and so trying to differentiate the curriculum to help them access it. So when a child can really see that I can connect with this, I can get on with this and really responding, meeting their needs, I guess, meeting the needs of feeding young people so that they can access it.
A lot of children arriving at school. Fatigued, having not slept, so making sure that their basic needs are met so that they can then access a curriculum relevant to them, appropriate to them, and can equip them to be taking on roles that we don't even know are needed yet, because that's the case that a lot of the traditional roles because of the improvements in technology, artificial intelligence, the jobs that the young people in school are going to be doing now, We don't even know what they are yet, so making sure they've got those basic skills.
So I think investing, understanding, meeting the basic needs of young people and then being able to give them a variety of learning opportunities and finding purposeful ways to connect with community and to learn together and to share your learnings and to understand that as adults we can learn from young people.
Particularly when we've got young people arriving from different parts of the world at such a frequent rate, the amount that we can learn from them and how that builds that person up in terms of a sense of importance. And, and so they're not just here to, to take from us as learners. There's so much that they can contribute from.
their own lived experiences as well and really valuing that. So trying to really take that time to understand the young people collectively to be able to make sure that you can get the best outcomes for them.
This is a sustainability podcast. So why is education such a huge part of being sustainable?
Problem solving is massive, but also realizing that there's optimism, there is hope, and not building false hope, not building false realities, understanding the reality, this is tough, the future is even tougher, but there is hope in that, and there always has been. We've got one generation that rather than calling out and criticizing, They need to educate themselves about the various sort of challenges, opportunities and nuances that exist in life.
And just being closed down yourself to education means that you're never going to enlighten yourself. You're only going to have a clickbait point of view. And I think that people have to be prepared for that lifelong learning. Learning doesn't have to take place in the classroom as well. I think here in England it very much is a lot of classroom learning led.
And it's within that kind of space. But, um, during the pandemic had an amazing experience where I had a zoom session with a school in Malawi, that classroom was outside and they were just sat on the trees learning. The experience with the global teacher prize, talking to a teacher. who set up a classroom within a brothel because the children were being taken to work by their mothers.
And this person saw it as an opportunity to set up a classroom and to teach the young people within there. So when you're thinking about classrooms, um, and you're thinking about places to learn, times to learn, it doesn't have to be that traditional model that, that, that we know. It can be complete variety and that learning in classrooms can take the shape of a whole host of variety of places and locations.
So, right, let's do our best now to actually answer the question. How do we work towards achieving goal number four of the UN Sustainable Development Goals? So, Nathan, you're going to be in charge here. What I want is one action point at every level, please. So, I'll start with global.
Highlight the importance of education and the importance of teachers, the importance of quality teacher training and The recognition that all young people have a right to education.
National. I think funding is a big part. We have to make sure that schools are adequately funded, adequately supported and motivated to work towards that level of inclusion of young people.
And regional.
Further collaboration. Collaboration between schools, between multi academy trusts and an openness and a willingness to to learn as well as to share your learning.
And our final question is always at an individual level, and it's a stop and start. Okay? So if you could ask everyone listening to stop doing something today and start doing something today, what would that be?
It's much easier said than done, but stop worrying. And start being curious and ask why more and ask why more with the young people that you're working with and share that learning journey together.
Thanks to my guest, Nathan Atkinson. Thank you so much, Nathan, for being here. That was really fascinating. And thank you all for listening to The Seventeen. We're a new podcast looking to grow, so please do hit the subscribe button on your podcast provider. Leave us with a review and tell your friends all about us as well.
If you want to find out more about the Yorkshire Sustainability Festival, which is coming up in June 2024, just go to ysf. thessustainabilitycommunity. com. There you can also get tickets for the conference, which will feature keynote speakers, including Kevin MacLeod and Mary Portis OBE. That's all for now.
We'll be back on the 17th of next month with another episode of The 17. Thank you for listening.