The South African school curriculum is failing to prepare learners for the urgent realities of environmental degradation, according to UNESCO Chair: Education Law in Africa legal researcher Motheo Brodie, who is calling for an immediate, comprehensive overhaul of the national curriculum to integrate climate justice perspectives.

Speaking at a roundtable in Johannesburg, Brodie highlighted that the current National Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) treats environmental shifts as isolated scientific phenomena rather than systemic socioeconomic crises.

Key findings from a recent UNESCO Chair report indicate a profound lack of climate justice content from Grade R to Grade 12.

Climate change education is largely restricted to the final term of Grade 9 Natural Sciences, with minor inclusions across only five subjects in Grades 10 and 11, focusing more on theory than justice, he said.

Brodie explained that while the curriculum touched on constitutional rights and inequality, it failed to link these systemic issues to environmental racism and shifting climate patterns.

Consequently, students graduated without understanding how environmental degradation compromised their constitutional rights, he said.

This pedagogical gap creates severe real-world vulnerabilities.

The current framework fails to address how environmental shifts threaten the survival of marginalised populations, practical measures to address food and water scarcity and the extreme susceptibility of children in rural communities.

Brodie noted the lack of interactivity in standardised lessons, which ignored the immediate, lived experiences of students facing localised ecological degradation.

With extreme weather events increasingly disrupting education across South Africa, the UNESCO Chair: Education Law in Africa has issued a stark warning to the Department of Basic Education (DBE), calling for the overhaul of school infrastructure and curriculum.

Brodie called for urgent structural changes across all schooling phases, advocating for the seamless integration of climate change and climate justice across all grades and subjects.

“Teachers can only instruct what the official framework dictates," Brodie stated. "Without immediate structural updates and systemic classroom support, South African learners will remain unequipped to navigate or resolve the escalating environmental crises impacting their communities."

He argued that the State had a constitutional obligation to ensure school infrastructure was climate-resilient.

"This is not a 'nice-to-have'," he emphasised, pointing out that many schools in rural areas and townships are in a state of decay and completely incapable of withstanding the growing dangers posed by climate change, such as intense flooding and heatwaves.

According to the report, most national school infrastructure standards, including dormitories, fail to consider climate change, leaving buildings vulnerable and lacking sustainability.

“Current infrastructure standards for schools in South Africa frequently ignore the urgent need for climate-proofing," Brodie said.

"We are not asking how to make classrooms cooler when they are stiflingly hot, nor are we designing structures that can withstand intense flooding, which is becoming increasingly frequent in vulnerable, low-income areas. Instead, many learners are forced to study under leaking roofs or in flooded, excessively hot classrooms, which severely hampers their right to a quality education.”

Beyond physical infrastructure, Brodie called on the DBE to provide comprehensive professional development to ensure educators were confident in delivering complex, systemic concepts.

He noted that schools needed specialised teaching materials and practical tools to effectively communicate climate justice dynamics.

The proposed curriculum reform insists that the DBE must explicitly connect environmental degradation to human rights, public health, and economic equity.