Whole school approaches integrate the three strands of school action shown in Figure 1.1.1 EE has implications for practice in each of these three areas. The curriculum, through topic work, thematic approaches and/or the monitoring and managing of subject content should have an holistic approach which emphasises the inter-connectedness of phenomena.The content of the curriculum should also be exploring locally sustainable solutions to environmental problems. Arguably, in the earlier years of primary education, children should be exposed to the joy and wonder of the natural environment before experiencing some of its more hateful aspects. This is not to say that children's anxieties about the environment should be ignored, but simply making a plea that these anxieties should not be heightened deliberately and unnecessarily. In this way, if the early years of schooling compensate for the limited lack of contact that many children now have with the natural world, before proceeding to look at some of the environmental problems that we face, we have the beginnings of sequence and progression in EE.
EE involves education in, for and about the environment. Values education, local action and the consistency of the formal and non-formal curriculum are clearly seen as strands within this whole school approach. In this respect it is crucial that schools practise what they teach and that the practice in both the formal and non-formal curriculum are monitored regularly.