Lessons For The Future

The idea of creating a GCSE in natural history was first floated a decade ago, but is it any closer to becoming a reality? And could it help change the fortunes of our nature-depleted nation?

- Ben Hoare

To many people these days, nature is more or less a green blur: pleasant, desirable but largely anonymous. Take trees – four-fifths of Britons cannot identify an ash from its leaves, according to a Woodland Trust survey in 2013. Meanwhile, ash dieback disease is fast wreaking havoc, wiping out one of the most abundant and wildlife-rich trees in the country. The trouble is, how can conservationists expect the public to care, if they don’t even notice?

Study after study has shown a widespread ignorance of iconic natural things that form the fabric of our world, from acorns to adders, buttercups to bramble, catkins to conkers. In a nutshell, as it were, we no longer know our A, B, C of nature. Growing concern about this ecological illiteracy, and what it means for our future, has been driving the campaign to introduce a new GCSE in natural history in the UK, one of the most nature-depleted nations on the planet.

Author, radio producer and environmental activist Mary Colwell – best known for her Radio 4 series Shared Planet and Saving Species, and her book Curlew Moon – first had the idea a decade ago: “It came to me like a thunderbolt,” she tells me now. Her brainwave triggered an “initial flurry of interest”, then spent years on the backburner.

Despairing at the worsening biodiversity crisis, Mary tried again in 2017. Relaunching her proposal with a petition, she captured the zeitgeist perfectly, sparking newspaper comment pieces and countless exchanges on social media. Government ministers made encouraging noises. Crucially, a major exam board lent its support.