Crayon drawings taped at eye level, tiny chairs surrounding smaller tables, and the background noise of kids fighting over who gets to use the red truck are all commonplace when you walk into practically any preschool. Unless someone brings it up, you probably won’t notice if that classroom is subtly teaching kids to consider the planet they’re inheriting. OMEP’s Environmental Rating Scale for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood fills that gap between what preschools believe they are doing and what they are actually doing.
With assistance from UNESCO, academics and preschools from ten different countries collaborated internationally to develop the scale, which is called the ERS-SDEC. It was not intended to be bureaucratic or punitive. According to how it has been implemented, the concept was practical: provide educators with a methodical approach to examine their own classrooms and determine whether sustainability—environmental, social, and economic—is truly integrated into daily operations or is only mentioned sporadically when someone remembers to place a recycling bin close to the door.
The tool’s ambition is not the only thing that makes it intriguing. It’s the various ways that people have reacted to it. When educators in Russia used the scale for the first time, they were genuinely uneasy. This wasn’t because the questions were hostile, but rather because they had never used a framework that made them consider the learning environment from the perspective of sustainable values. Some said that using the scale altered their perception of their own teaching priorities. Admitting that is significant because it implies the tool is doing more than just generating data.
As part of their master’s degrees, student teachers at two universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina received training on how to use the scale. The findings revealed something worth considering: although aspiring educators gained a more acute awareness of environmental sustainability, the researchers discovered that playfulness—that is, authentic, unstructured, values-based play—remained underdeveloped as a professional instinct. In early education, sustainability may be conceptualized before it is practiced.
Level three on the scale, which uses a rating system, is thought to be the most prevalent preschool environmental education practice currently in use. That framing is important. Teachers are not being asked to be exceptional. It asks them to identify areas in which ordinary fails and then take appropriate action. Depending on who is reading it, that strategy may or may not be intentionally modest. A scale based on average practice, according to critics, sets a ceiling that is already too low. The only place change can begin, according to supporters, is by meeting teachers where they are.
The ERS-SDEC has a practical tension that its designers have been quite transparent about. Setting goals, identifying gaps, and modifying practice all go smoothly when a single teacher uses it as a private self-audit. However, things become complex when comparisons between classrooms, schools, and nations are made. Training becomes crucial. Cultural context is more important than most people realize. A shared outdoor area in a busy Russian city block is not the same as a peaceful garden in Bali, and the scale must be the same in both.
The fact that the scale is available for download in nine different languages speaks volumes about its aspirations. This is not being handled as a regional experiment by OMEP. It’s difficult to avoid feeling as though something genuine is being tested as you watch the instrument move through Croatia, Portugal, Chile, and Northern Ireland, discovering unique resistance and resonance in each location. not limited to preschools. Regarding whether a classroom that has been subtly and purposefully created with that objective in mind can truly influence the habits a person develops at age four, such as observing the world, caring about it, and feeling some responsibility toward it. In all honesty, the answer is probably more often than previously believed.
