We’re launching a course to help save the planet!

The new course – designed and delivered by experts at the zoo and The University of Chester – offers a first opportunity, anywhere in the world for education professionals to gain a recognised qualification in the field of conservation and sustainability education.

Launching in 2023, the Conservation and Sustainability Education PGCert aims to provide educators with the highly sought-after knowledge and skills needed to help learners maximise the impact they can have in carving a better future for the planet.

It follows world leaders gathering in Egypt for the UN’s global COP27 where the importance of education in solving the planet’s climate and ecological emergencies  was one of the key areas of discussion.

Liz continued to say:

“It has a crucial role to play if we’re to resolve the urgent crises we’re currently facing in the form of climate change and global biodiversity loss. However, only can it truly do this if we have more and better trained educators who thoroughly understand the magnitude of the environmental challenges we face, and have the skills to engage their learners and organisations with the solutions needed to address them.

“That’s why this new course – the first of its kind ever to launch in the UK, and indeed the first education course to be developed by a zoo and a university globally – is so important, and so valuable. It’s, at long last, putting sustainability and conservation at the forefront of learning.

“Recently the zoo launched a new 10-year Conservation Masterplan. One of its key aims is to train more conservationists of the future and empower people to live more sustainably. This course, led by our world-leading conservation experts, is a big step forward to helping us achieve our ambitious goals.”

With Chester Zoo and the University of Chester joining forces, the course promises to combine
conservation-focused expertise with first-rate education sector knowledge.

Educators say it will be rooted in real-world practice and based heavily on Chester Zoo’s wide-ranging expertise and decades of experience in the field of conservation, with education programmes delivered both in the zoo and in support of field partners across the globe.

Already, more than 450,000 people participate in the zoo’s learning programmes every year and the zoo supports more than 100 schools across the North West to implement a conservation-focused curriculum, while the University of Chester boasts more than 14,200 students and offers 550 courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students.