Ecological Literacy Programme - BEC

DEVELOPING ECOLOGICAL LITERACY COMPETENCIES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF THE BEC

a proposal submitted by Mrs Gilberte Chung Kim Chung Director, Bureau de lEducation Catholique Rose Hill
in collaboration with

Sanju Deenapanray & Anneloes Smitsman ELIA Ecological Living In Action 74 Socit La Flche, La Gaulette

(January 2011)

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Table of Contents
Table of Contents........................................................................................................................................ 2 Introduction................................................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 The Problem of Sustainability............................................................................................................ 3 1.2 The Paradox of Education.................................................................................................................. 5 1.3 Foundations of Ecological Literacy..................................................................................................... 6 1.4 Outcome of Project............................................................................................................................ 7 1.5 Objectives of Project.......................................................................................................................... 7 2. Methodology and Timelines.................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Ecological Footprint Analysis........................................................................................................... 11 2.1.1 Carrying out EF analysis schedule of activities....................................................................... 11 2.2 Systems Approach........................................................................................................................... 12 2.3 Timeline of milestones..................................................................................................................... 14 3. Budget................................................................................................................................................... 15

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Introduction
Ecological Literacy is a positive vision for change towards sustainable or ecological living. It acknowledges that there are several paradoxes with the current educational paradigm that make it incompatible with bringing about transformative change required for a sustainable future. This project will introduce ecological literacy competencies in secondary schools managed by the Bureau de lEducation Catholique (BEC). In particular, the project will develop the skills of school communities to carry out Ecological Footprint (EF) analysis to quantify the impacts of school activities on the natural environment. Further, school communities will be able to design and implement practical actions to reduce their footprints based on a systems approach. The ecological literacy competencies will assist to equip school communities with the knowledge necessary to comprehend interrelatedness, understand how complex systems work, and an attitude of care or stewardship towards the natural world.

1.1 The Problem of Sustainability

Sustainability, as a desirable goal for societies to achieve, and sustainable development, as the process that will lead to that goal, have become high priority objectives of all nations. The predicament can be attributed to the past and current unsustainable patterns of human activities in both type (i.e. quality) and scale (i.e. quantity). In fact, the simple fact that we are having a discourse about sustainable development is testimony to this effect. In order to highlight the scale and scope of unsustainability in our world it suffices to cite only a few examples here. Firstly, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) published a study in 2005 establishing that: 1 1. Fourteen (14) out of twenty four (24) ecosystems i.e. approximately 60% of the ecosystems studied - vital for human well-being were being degraded or used unsustainably. Today, the scientific evidence is clear that the homeostatic functioning of the planet has been so perturbed by the anthropogenic accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that climate change has emerged as arguably the most challenging developmental issue of this century.2 The impact of human activities as the main driver for climate change has literally turned human beings into weather makers; 3 2. Changes being made in ecosystems were increasing the likelihood of nonlinear changes in ecosystems i.e. accelerating, abrupt and potentially irreversible changes that have important consequences for human well-being; and 3. The harmful effects of the degradation of ecosystem services were being borne disproportionately by the poor, were contributing to growing inequities and disparities across groups of people, and were sometimes the principal factor causing poverty and social conflict.

1 2

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being - Synthesis. United Nations (2009) Achieving Sustainable Development in an Age of Climate Change. 3 Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: The history and future impacts of climate change (Allen Lane, Great Britain, 2005).

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

The MEA report also noted that the important direct drivers of ecosystem changes were unlikely to diminish in the first half of this century and identified two drivers climate change and excessive nutrient loading to becoming more severe.

Secondly, a study calculating the Ecological Footprint of nations has shown that humanity is exceeding its ecological limits by 50%. In other words, it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.4 There are clear indications that the Ecological Footprint of human beings will continue to increase in the future driven predominantly by an increase in world population and increasing per capita consumption. This disproportionate appropriation of the planets resources by human beings is closely linked with the classical economic model based on increasing economic growth, and by extension increasing energy and material consumption on a finite planet. In 2007, Mauritius had an EF of 4.26 gha/person, which exceeded the worlds biological capacity of 1.8 gha/person. This implies that if every person would have consumed like the average Mauritian in 2007, we would need 2.4 planets to maintain all human activities.5 Of greater concern is the fact that Mauritius has an ecological deficit of 3.70 gha/person since its bio-productive capacity was only 0.56 gha/person. 6 This means that, on average, Mauritians can only maintain their high levels of consumption by appropriating resources from elsewhere. This raises ethical questions concerning the fair allocation of resources among members of the family of human beings. Figure 1 shows the historical change in the EF and bio-capacity of Mauritius. Whereas the EF has increased exponentially over the past two decades, the bio-capacity has dwindled. Finally, a report on the well-being of nations has shown that out of the 180 independent countries that were studied none was ecologically sustainable.7 The study showed that Mauritius had a double deficit in terms of both its human and ecosystem wellbeing.

4 5

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/ - accessed 24 January 2011. In 2007, the world average EF was 2.7 gha/person. Hence, the average consumption of Mauritians was 1.58 times higher than the world average consumption level. 6 B. Ewing, D. Moore, S. Goldfinger, A. Oursler, A. reed and M. Wackernagel, The Ecological Footprint Atlas 2010 (Oakland, Global Footprint Network, 2010). 7 Robert Prescott-Allen, The Wellbeing of Nations A Country-by-Country Index of Quality of Life and the Environment (Island Press, Washington DC, 2001).

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Figure 1 Variation of Ecological Footprint and bio-capacity for Mauritius, 1961-2007 ( Source: The Ecological Footprint Atlas 2010).

These studies do not only reveal that the state of affairs is already bad, but, more alarming of all, that the ecological crisis will only get worse in the future. This crisis can be interpreted as a result of the combination of several social traps, namely our flawed understanding of the relationship between the economy and the earth; the propensity to dominate nature using science and technology; any wrong turns in our evolution; or due to sheer human perversity. 8 One of the causes of the crisis of sustainability has to do with the propensity of all industrial societies to grow beyond the limits of natural systems.

1.2 The Paradox of Education

All of these social traps boil down to the fact that human beings consistently fail to recognise that human well-being is not separable from the well-being of the natural world and its ecosystems. Fundamentally, the crisis can be explained by the fact that most learning in modern societies is functional, and is oriented towards socialization and vocational goals that take no account of the challenge of sustainability. Education is presently characterized by a number of paradoxes that raise profound questions about its role in creating ecologically aware and responsive citizens. 9 The most significant of these paradoxes is that while the quantity of education is increasing, so is the level of ecological unsustainability. Although education can be a lever for creating better societies, it cannot do so in its current form because it is: Still informed by a fundamentally mechanistic worldview, and hence of learning;

David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (SUNY Press, NY, 1992), pg. 4. 9 S. Sterling, Sustainable Education Re-visioning Learning and Change, in Schumacher Briefings, No. 6 (Green Books, Devon, 2002), pg. 13.

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Largely ignorant of the sustainability issues that will increasingly affect all aspects of peoples lives as the century progresses; Blind to the rise of ecological thinking which seeks to foster a more integrative awareness of the needs of people and our interrelatedness with our natural environment; It focuses predominantly on the socialization and vocational dimensions that are compatible with the market economy, at the expense of two vital relational aspects of living sustainably, namely to: (1) develop the individual and his/her potential (i.e. savoir dtre), and (2) learn how to live in a balanced way in society and within our natural environment (i.e. savoir vivre).

It is clear today that the ecological crisis cannot be solved by the same kind of education that helped create it. For education to play a transformative role in steering society towards sustainability, it will need the capacity to create ecologically literate individuals. Such a person will have the knowledge necessary to comprehend interrelatedness, understand how complex systems work, and an attitude of care or stewardship towards the natural world.

1.3 Foundations of Ecological Literacy

A fundamental element of ecological literacy has to do with whether or not the public understands the relationship between its well-being and the health of ecosystems. To be able to realize this, both the substance and process of education has to be re-oriented. Ecological literacy as this transformative education paradigm has been proposed to rest on six foundations: 10 1. A recognition that all education is ecological education i.e. the primary reason for education is to guide people to live sustainably on the planet; 2. Ecological issues are complex and cannot be understood through a reductionist approach i.e. sustainability issues can only be understood by employing a systems or holistic approach, namely by recognizing and understanding that all parts of a system are interrelated through feedback systems. Complex systems behave differently from what our mental models would suggest; 3. Education occurs in part as a dialogue with a place i.e. education has to be contextualized (deriving meaning from the place where learning takes place) and should not be merely an abstraction for the learner or practitioner; 4. The way education occurs is as important as its content i.e. the ultimate aim of education is to: (1) inspire children to develop their natural potentials; (2) show them how to become stewards of our planetary and human well-being; and (3) guide them how live a meaningful life within the life-sustaining capacity of our planet. The best way to teach children is to show by example.
10

David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1992), pp. 90-92.

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Children are natural modellers - they model and role-play behavior. For this to be successful what is taught needs to lived and practiced by the educational community as a whole. Consequently, all distinctions between teacher and student, between the school and the community, and those between areas of knowledge, are dissolved; 5. Experience in and of the natural world is an essential part of understanding the environment i.e. abstractions about the natural environment carried out during indoor learning does not have the propensity to alter the ways in which we relate with the natural world and to change our behavior to live sustainably; 6. Education relevant to the challenge of building an ecologically sustainable society will enhance the learners competence with natural systems i.e. ecological literacy is a vital leverage point to steer society towards ecological sustainability.

1.4 Outcome of Project

The outcome or overarching goal of the Ecological Literacy Programme will be: To enhance the competencies of teachers and students of the secondary schools of the Bureau de lEducation Catholique in addressing sustainability issues through experiential learning.

1.5 Objectives of Project

In order to achieve the overarching goal, the project will aim to attain the following interwoven objectives: 1. Using Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) as a tool to quantify the footprint of school activities through a co-learning practice between teachers and students; and 2. Training teachers to employ a systems approach so that creative and holistic actions can be in teaching. The methodology or approach that is proposed to achieve the specific objectives is discussed in the next section.

2. Methodology and Timelines

The methodology involves the application of experiential learning in the school community by engaging both teachers and students in a co-learning experience. The Ecological Literacy project provides exciting opportunities for enhancing learning skills, sharpening observation and problem-solving skills, and producing measurable outcomes all with the objective of heightening the awareness, sensitivity and responsiveness of the school community to the challenge of living sustainably (or ecological living). 7

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Ecological Literacy requires the recognition of appropriate and meaningful strategies to help teachers and students discover more about the natural world, assemble information and facts, and solve problems.11 To become involved in respecting nature and protecting the environment over the long term, people need to have a sense of hope and gratification from ecological education. Building programs that merely catalog harm without advancing the sense that accomplishment can be made will not offer the kind of fun and enriching learning environment that creates a sustainable commitment to environmental protection. While the study of nature would be incomplete without discussing the threats to the natural world, an appreciation of nature should not be lacking in environmental education programs. To foster appreciation one needs to know how to inspire children to care. Only direct experience of nature can get a child truly excited about its place within our natural world. Teaching about creates a distance between learner (subject) and object (what is to be learned). Experiential learning places the student in the appropriate learning environment as such facilitating their discovery of what is to be learned. By taking the learning process outside the four walls of the classroom, the discovery process will focus on the entire school community and premises. The proposed project will be deployed incrementally in two stages. Stage 1 (or Year 1 - 2011) will see the participation of the following 9 BEC secondary schools (out of a total of 18). One additional school not under the purview of the BEC will be invited to participate. List of schools Stage 1: 1. College du St Esprit Riviere Noire 2. College du St Esprit Quatre-Bornes 3. Saint Marys College, Rose-Hill 4. Bon et Perpetuel Secours, Beau-Bassin 5. Loreto College Curepipe 6. Loreto College Saint Pierre 7. Loreto College Port-Louis 8. Notre Dame College, Curepipe
11

Stewart J. Hudson, Challenges for Environmental Education: Issues and Ideas for the 21 st Century, BioScience 51 (2001) 283-288.

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

9. College Sainte Marie, Palma 10. Saint Andrews College, Rose-Hill ( Guest school not under the purview of the BEC but having already participated in a similar project in 2007 and which will be invited to participate in the Ecological Literacy programme). Stage 2 (Year 2 - 2012) will see the participation of all the 18 (or 20) secondary schools, with an invitation to another secondary school from the private or State sector should there be an interest. Schools that participated in Stage 1 will share their experience with the new entries. It is expected that the schools of the BEC would have developed sufficient competencies by the end of Stage 2 that they would be able to continue with the practices with minimal technical support from outside. Stage 2: 11. Saint Marys West College, Petite Riviere 12. College de La Confiance, Beau-Bassin 13. College Pere Laval, Sainte Croix 14. Bon et Perpetuel Secours Fatima, Goodlands 15. Saint Joseph College, Curepipe 16. Loreto College Quatre-Bornes 17. Loreto College Mahebourg 18. Loreto College Rose-Hill 19. Loreto College Bambous Virieux 20. Guest school from the private or State sector The competencies to be developed in this project will produce a virtuous or self-reinforcing circle of practicing sustainable living as depicted schematically in Figure 2. It also highlights the power of learning by doing and replication effects. This is especially so when experiences and insights gained in Stage 1 are transferred to Stage 2. This methodology also has the power for replication. The pioneering ecological literacy programme addressing 18 to 20 secondary schools (a total of 12,000 students) may have an impact with the other private and State secondary schools of Mauritius which has a total of 179 secondary schools 9

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

(representing a secondary school population of 115,000 students, and by extension their families). Thus, key sustainability challenges can be addressed at national level.

Virtuous Circle of Ecological Literacy Competency Development Enhanced Enhanced capability to capability to adopt systems adopt systems approach to approach to lowering lowering footprint footprint

Competency Competency Development Development

Sustainable Sustainable Living Living

Learning By Doing & Replication Effect

Figure 2 Schematic illustration of the learning-by-doing approach of this project.

Feedback: The learning-by-doing methodology will provide valuable feedbacks for enhancing the learning aids and the implementation of the project, and it is expected that another 4 days will be required to incorporate these learning experiences before Stage 2 is undertaken. A end-of-Stage 1 report will also be submitted to the BEC that could be used to tailor specific induction trainings about and for sustainability for its teachers in the future. As part of the assessment, mentors from Stage 1 will interact with to-be mentors in Stage 2 for knowledge sharing. By then, mentors from Stage 1 would have captured the experience of their respective EF Teams. This report will also provide an assessment of priority actions that can be implemented in schools based on the creativity, cost and technical ease of implementing ideas suggested in the final reports of the Ecological Footprint (EF) Teams; Evaluation of project: In order to motivate the EF Teams, an exhibition will be organized with all the participating schools and a panel will evaluate the progress of each school. The evaluation will focus on the assessment of cognitive, communication and social skills. It is planned that all the EF Teams will get together to share their findings and experiences through presentations and other creative means, and three awards will be allocated as follows: i. ii. iii. Calculation of EF and creativity of solutions; Team work; Creativity in communication (final report and presentations)

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Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

The project will be implemented by ELIA Ecological Living In Action (Dr Sanju Deenapanray and Ms Annloes Smitsman) under the oversight of BEC. All the training of mentors will take place at BECs training centre.

2.1 Ecological Footprint Analysis

Ecological Footprint (EF) is a per capita measure of the land equivalent requirement to produce the resources that a given population, such as a school community, consumes and to assimilate the wastes that it produces. EF thus estimates a population's consumption of energy, food, and materials, as well as the waste that it generates, in terms of the area of biologically productive land or sea required to produce the natural resources or, in the case of energy, to absorb the corresponding carbon dioxide emissions. By using land area as unit of measurement, EF avoids the subjective complications surrounding monetary valuation of resources, and provides a visually simple presentation. Therefore, it becomes an attractive tool for communicating about, teaching and planning for sustainability. The application of EF analysis in schools can be used as a powerful pedagogical tool to: (1) assess the impacts that the school community has on the natural environment; (2) ground the learning process within the place of immediate concern to the community, which in this case is the school; (3) use the EF analysis to identify and implement practical actions for the community to reduce its impacts, if any; (4) understand the impacts of a consumer lifestyle on the finite natural world, as well as the ethical dimensions of (over)consumption, and (5) transcend the teacher/student or school/community distinctions by creating an enquiry-based learning where teachers and students unveil the learning process together, and where students and teachers become the bridges to the broader community of households that they represent.12
2.1.1 Carrying out EF analysis schedule of activities

The EF analysis will take place in the sequence shown in Figure 3. A EF Team will be formed in each school and will be constituted of approximately 20 students of Form IV and between 3 and 4 teachers as mentors. The EF Team is formed on a completely voluntary basis, and members should be chosen from across all academic disciplines because EF analysis is a life skill that should be available to all individuals. Here the project attempts to transcend the artificial disciplinary barriers that are not compatible with sustainable living, and creates a co-learning environment where students and teachers work together. All the necessary skills and competencies will be provided to the EF Team by the project.
12

Alexander Lautensach, Teaching Values Through the Ecological Footprint, Green Theory and Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy 5 (2009) 153-168.

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Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

1. Identify Ecological Impact Areas

2. Design Investigation

3. Carry out Investigation

4a. Calculate Ecological Footprint 4b. Identify Actions to Reduce EF

5. Communicate

Findings

Figure 3 The flow of Ecological Footprint Analysis activities.

In order for the EF Teams to complete the flow of activities shown in Figure 3, the following support will be provided by the project: 1. Training of mentors: A two-days training of all selected mentors on the basic theory of EF, familiarization with the EF Calculator (EFC), methodology for constituting EF Team, and a mock rehearsal of the activities in Fig. 3. This training will involve mentors from both stages i.e. a total of up to 80 teachers. The idea is to start the communication in Stage 2 schools already in 2011; 2. Introducing the project in schools: The project will be launched in each school through a 2-3 hours interactive session with the EF Team; 3. Carrying out EF analysis: A total of 12 days of on-the-ground assistance will be provided to the 8 EF Teams to complete the activities outlined in Figure 3; 4. Learning aids: A copy of the EF calculator and training manuals will be provided to both mentors and students. All the learning aids are already available, but will require some minor changes that would take about 1 day of work;

2.2 Systems Approach

It is now a well-known argument among ecologists and environmental educators that the traditional forms of schooling have exacerbated the problems of isolationist and silo thinking. With the compartmentalisation of disciplines into various subjects often learned rote without real-life experiences to ground their learning, young children are initiated into a worldview based on technocratic and mechanistic frameworks used by schools. Ecological literacy postulates systems 12

Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

thinking and holistic learning as a means to shift our modern culture to new models and metaphors for a more sustainable world. The following understandings are embedded in such thinking and learning: 1. The whole is more than the sum of its parts: The essential properties of a living system are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have; these properties arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts. Therefore, properties of the parts can be understood when the whole is understood. A systems thinking requires contextual thinking, and the EF analysis does this by grounding the project in the daily reality of school activities; 2. Living systems at all levels are networks: The web of life refers to living systems interacting in a network fashion with other systems. For instance, living systems emerge from the interactions between social (the economy is considered as a social system since it is a system that has been created by human beings) and environmental systems. In nature, there are no hierarchies - there are only networks nesting within other networks; 3. Complex behavior of systems: Relationships among members of an ecological community are nonlinear, involving multiple interdependent feedback loops. Quite often causes and impacts are delocalized (i.e. take place in geographically distant places) and impacts are delayed (i.e. take place at a distant point in time). So it is important to understand the behavior of systems so that actions that we take today do not have detrimental impacts elsewhere (place) and in the future (time); In order to learn about patterns and relationships, the development of ecological literacy for sustainability occurs best when pedagogy is embedded in place, as is the case here. In knowing a place intimately, there would be reciprocity between thinking and doing, and a complex mosaic of phenomena and problems would be understood only through multidisciplinary lenses. 13 So the project will also provide mentors with competencies to understand systems thinking so that holistic solutions can be formulated and subsequently implemented to reduce footprints once EF impacts have been calculated. The advantage of the systems approach is its applicability to any situation or discipline. In fact, it is a way to understand living systems and life. A training module will be tailored to cover the following topics over 5 days:
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Introduction to systems thinking and why it is needed for ecological literacy; Properties of mental models or the inability of mental models to grapple with complexity that give rise to barriers to learning for sustainability; Core characteristics of systems that give rise to dynamic complexity; Introduction to the generic behaviours of complex systems i.e. system Archetypes;

For example see, Dilafruz Williams, Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 2:1 (2008) 4149; Adam Douglas Henry, The Challenge of Learning for Sustainability: A Prolegomenon to Theory, Human Ecology Review 16 (2009) 131-140;

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Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Ecosystems and social systems as complex adaptive systems; Introduction to tools and concepts to better understand the relationships between parameters of a complex system e.g. stocks and flows, and Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD);

The training of mentors will take place when Activity 4 shown in Fig. 3 is being carried out by EF Teams.

2.3 Timeline of milestones

The activities mentioned in the previous two sections are summarized in Table 1 with tentative dates for their execution. Table 1 also provides the number of days of technical assistance that the project will require. Table 1: Summary of the proposed timeline of project milestones for Stage 1 (2011).
Activity Who is involved? Proposed calendar time Number of trainer-days

1. Training of mentors on EF analysis 2. Launching of EF analysis project in schools 3. Carrying out EF analysis 4. Training of mentors on systems thinking 5. Submission of reports 6. Panel visits

Mentors & ELIA

Last week of March 2011

2 days

EF Teams & ELIA

First fortnight of April

15 days support

of

in-school

EF Teams Mentors & ELIA

Between April and August July (winter preferably) break 5 days

EF Teams ELIA Ecological Living In Action and Team EF Teams, management & guests school invited

Friday 26 August 2011 Friday 9 September 2011 1 day

7. Award ceremony

Friday 16 September 2011

1 day

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Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

8. End-of-Stage 1 assessment & reporting 9. Implementation of actions to reduce footprints ELIA Friday 28 October 2011 4 days

School community

Beginning year 2012

of

academic

3. Budget
Although this proposal seeks funding for Stage 1 of the project, the total budget for the entire project over two years is provided to give potential funders an indication of the overall costs of the project in 20 schools. The total budget for the project i.e. Stage 1 (2011) and Stage 2 (2012) is estimated at Rs 890,560. Stage 1 and Stage 2 will cost Rs 472,530 and Rs 418,030, respectively. The total cost of implementing Stage 1 of the project is Rs 472,530 as broken down in Table 2. Expenses for the trainers (fees and travel) and grants for schools have not been used in the calculation of the contingency item of the budget. Each school is given a grant of Rs15,000 as a start to implement their action plans to reduce school footprints. Additional funds for implementing action plans will be secured from elsewhere should the need arise. The other items are self-explanatory. Table 2: Breakdown of budget for implementing Stage 1 of project. Item Training costs
Fee Travel 28 days Rs 6,500 / day 182,000 6,000

Units

Rate

Sub-total (Rs)

Training costs sub-total Grant for schools 10 schools Rs 15,000 / school

188,000 150,000

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Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Publication costs (learning aids and training materials) BEC Administrative costs Preparation of final report Jury memorabilia Award ceremony
Venue rental Shields/trophies Certificates(Pupils and teachers) Light lunch Transport of teams 3 units 240 unit Rs1,500 / unit Rs15 / unit

12,000

25,000

10 schools

Rs1,000 / school

10,000

3 juries

Rs 1,000 / jury

3,000

25,000 4,500 3,600

240 persons 10 schools

Rs80 / person Rs2,000 / school

19,200 20,000

Award ceremony subtotal Contingency 10% of costs excluding training fees & grants

72,300

12,230

Total

472,530

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Table 3 gives the breakdown of expenses for Stage 2 of the project. The expected cost is lower since the need for external assistance is reduced by schools participating in Stage 1 providing support to Stage 2 entries through sharing of knowledge. This is also a vital feature of the ecological literacy project where one of the pedagogical aims is to create co-learning through sharing and collaboration. In order to achieve this co-learning outcome, the adopt-a-school approach could be used whereby each Stage 1 schools adopts a new entry school in Stage 2. Although random mapping of schools would be desirable, the criterion for mapping schools could be geographical spread for ease of implementation. Table 3: Breakdown of budget for implementing Stage 2 of project. Item Training costs
Fee Travel 19 days Rs 6,500 / day 123,500 10,000

Units

Rate

Sub-total (Rs)

Training costs sub-total Grant for schools Publication costs (learning aids and training materials) BEC Administrative costs Preparation of final report Jury memorabilia Award ceremony 10 schools Rs1,000 / school 10 schools Rs 15,000 / school

133,500 150,000 12,000

25,000

10,000

3 juries

Rs 1,000 / jury

3,000

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Ecological Literacy Competencies - BEC

Venue rental Shields/trophies Certificates (Pupils and teachers) Light lunch Transport of teams 3 units 240 units 240 persons 10 schools Rs1,500 / unit Rs15 / unit Rs80 / person Rs2,000 / school 25,000 4,500 3,600 19,200 20,000

Award ceremony subtotal Contingency 10% of costs excluding training fees & grants

72,300

12,230

Total

418,030

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