Weather and Climate in European School Curricula

In most European countries the necessity of education in Science and Mathematics to achieve higher standard and competetivness in research and technology development has been formulated in Lisboa initiative. However, the reasonable development of position of these subjects in educational systems in individual counries across Europe is not so fast. The EMS is trying to observe this process. Unfortunately, even the position of meteorology and climatology is not so nice in framework of these subjects, there are some traces of our sciences in physics, most of the small abundance of this topic is covered rather by geography. This situation is in contrary to the overall quite high interest in environmental issues in Europe.

In this study we provide the expansion of previous studies by Spekat and Wieringa (EMS, 2004, 2005) on Meteorology in primary and secondary school education. School systems for a number of European countries and existing presentations of meteorological and climatological subjects are compared with a focus on compulsory education ages. Starting ages, the age of crossover from universal primary schooling to various types of early secondary school, and the autonomy of schools are highly significant factors; they are shown to vary a great deal between countries. Equally diversified are the weather and climate subjects, their level of coverage and the subject area in which they are taught. It is discussed how the introduction of more meteorology in school curricula can be encouraged.