Countries covered: 158

Data type: Keyword analysis

Outcome type: Input

Data Source: The MECCE Project

Years covered: 2000-2022

Indicator description

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This indicator measures the extent to which climate change is included in national education policies. The MECCE project built a database of official national education documents, specifically National Curriculum Frameworks (NCFs) and Education Sector Plans (ESPs). These were analyzed for 29 English environmental, sustainability, and climate words translated into 24 additional languages to assess the extent of integration of climate change into a nation’s education policies

Dataset(s) the indicator is based on

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Brief description of specific dataset used to construct the indicator: 

This dataset was built by the MECCE team compiling  National Curriculum Frameworks (NCFs) and Education Sector Plans (ESPs). Based on previous studies conducted along with UNESCO, we initially had NCFs and ESPs for 100 countries. Additional sSearches were conducted for documents in the Ministries of Education websites and in the following databases: IIEP Planipolis, Eurydice, OECD Policy Outlook, IIEP Siteal and Edumeres; and studies: IIEP UNESCO, UNESCO ERCE, bringing the total count to 158 countries.

The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) is a policy instrument that serves as a guideline for all actors in the education system. It specifies the Design, planning and sequencing of teaching and learning processes. It includes a statement of purpose, contents, activities and learning practices, as well as the modalities for assessing learners’ achievements. It provides information on the implementation strategy, actions and benchmarks for implementation, monitoring and evaluation strategies. It generally presents the values upon which the system is based on and provides a plan of what students have to learn and are expected to achieve at the end of their schooling.

An Education Sector Plan (ESP) is by nature a national policy instrument, elaborated under the responsibility of government, which provides a long-term vision for the education system in the country, and outlines a coherent set of practicable strategies to reach its objectives and overcome difficulties. It is based on a sound analysis of the
current situation and of the causes of successes achieved and difficulties encountered. ESPs generally include implementation and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks.

Documents are public; database created by MECCE.

NCFs and ESPs are in 25 languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Mandarin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian.

Temporal scope

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• Time period(s) collected data is available: National law and policy documents were collected from June – September 2022. Documents included in the database were released between 2000 and 2022.
• Frequency of data collection in the past: N/A
• Frequency of data collection in the future: MECCE will update the database yearly.
• Change over time: N/A. .

 

Sample size, characteristics, and geographical coverage

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Total sample: 203 documents (177 NCFs, 26 ESPs) from 158 countries.

We compiled NCFs and ESPs from as many countries as possible. We prioritized the SDG regions in which our coverage was more limited but we then expanded our search for documents across the globe. Only documents released after 2000 were included. If at least one NCF was found for a country, the NCF was analyzed and any additional ESPs were excluded. As a result 133 countries were analyzed based on NCFs and 25 based on ESPs. In cases where more than one NCF or ESP was available for a country, the standardized references for all documents were averaged.

Country coverage (out of 197 UNFCCC parties) by SDG grouping. Percentage in brackets corresponds to total number of countries per SDG grouping.

Data Preparations

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The MECCE project organized the collected documents and extracted basic metadata including the document name, country, year of publication, level of education, and language. The majority of the documents found were in English, followed by Spanish and French. In order to analyze the non-English documents Climate Change and Training keywords were translated into 24 languages . Our translation protocol was:

1) drawing on existing translations, either from previous similar studies or in official UN and EU documents;
2) conducting translations using DeepL. For those languages not covered by DeepL, Google translate was used.
3) Native speakers working in the field of CCE were contacted to proofread all keywords. All languages were proofread except for Korean and Macedonian.

Keyword queries were run using the software Nvivo which provided keyword counts for each of the documents for each of 29 Climate Change keywords.. These keywords were then summed into Environmental/Sustainability and Climate Change categories. The keyword counts for each category were standardized for comparative purposes by dividing by the total words in the document multiplied by one million.

If a country had more than one document, the standardized references were then averaged across all documents for each category. The final database for indicator calculation therefore utilized a standardized reference count for Environmental/Sustainability and for Climate Change keywords for each country.

Indicator Calculations

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1: No Keywords found
2: Any Environmental/Sustainability Keywords
3: Fewer than 100 Climate Change Keywords OR High amount of Environmental/Sustainability Keywords (More than 1,000)
4: Between 100 and 1,000 Climate Keywords (Moderate)
5: More than 1,000 Climate Keywords (High)

Limitations

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Translation: working with keywords in 25 languages is a complex endeavor. 9 of the 25 languages have noun declensions, we were able to obtain declinations for all keywords in 4 of the languages (German, Romanian, Russian and Ukrainian). For The remaining 5 languages (Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Somali), we selected one or two keywords per term.

Human error in processing the documents, extracting metadata etc.

Nvivo does not work as well in all languages. We ran a preliminary analysis in search for keywords both on Nvivo and manually, and based on differences found we decided to manually code documents in the following languages: Arabic, Dutch, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian and Korean. In addition not all documents appeared to be equally machine readable even after running OCR on all of them.

From a conceptual standpoint, National Curriculum Frameworks have different aims, and therefore content, across countries. HenceTherefore, in some cases the NCF includes detailed syllabi, timetables, course contents, etc, whereas in others the NCF is a set of guidelines upon which grade specific curricula is drafted.

Initial analysis suggests that NCF documents are more likely to integrate climate change. Yet there was insufficient coverage of regions for which NCFs could be found so for 25 of the countries, ESPs were analyzed, introducing a systematic bias (these countries are indicated).

Keyword counts provide only a rough measure of the integration of something such as climate change into any document.

Besides the already mentioned systematic difference between NCFs and ESPs, there is an enormous range in the way that primary and secondary education is implemented in countries and these documents are not a comprehensive way to understand that. Analyzing them also provides little evidence about what is actually being done.

There are regional differences in terms of the prevalence of both NCFs and ESPs.

Acknowledgements

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The MECCE Project would like to thank all the translators who supported the keyword translations and the Research Assistants who dedicated endless hours to prepare this indicator.

The construction of this indicator draws on earlier research commissioned by UNESCO in 2020 and 2021, which resulted in two publications related to the global status of climate change education: UNESCO (2021a). Getting every school climate-ready: how countries are integrating climate change issues in education. Paris: UNESCO; and UNESCO (2021b). Learn for our planet: a global review of how environmental issues are integrated in education. Paris: UNESCO. We gratefully acknowledge UNESCO’s support for our work in this area.