Climate anxiety is on the rise among Australian children. While climate anxiety is often attributed to an awareness of climate change, little attention has been given to the role of the National Curriculum and the curriculum content children are proactively exposed to, in driving this emotional distress.
This report examines the role of the National Curriculum and curriculum-aligned material provided by third-party content providers in the rising rates of climate anxiety among children.
It substantiates previous IPA research, Pre- Adolescent Children: A Neuroscientific and Psychological Perspective, through examples of alarmist claims and materials in the National Curriculum and supporting materials.
This analysis found:
- The National Curriculum is skewed towards ideological environmental instruction. Through the mandated cross-curriculum priority of Sustainability, climate change is taught across all subjects and year levels—not just in science, but also for example in art, music, mathematics, physical education, and humanities.
- The Sustainability priority enables third-party providers to disseminate a range of alarmist and activist teaching resource materials. These materials teach children their actions are directly harming the planet and that they have an urgent duty to engage in activism.
- This is developmentally inappropriate. Emotionally charged lessons are introduced to students as young as five—well before they possess the cognitive or emotional maturity to process such complex global issues. Leading psychological frameworks warn that this approach risks long-term emotional harm.
Core skills and academic development are undermined as valuable classroom time is wasted, and subject integrity compromised by prioritising climate activism. While precious classroom time is dedicated to climate activism, NAPLAN results reveal that a third of children in both grades 3 and 5 are failing to meet minimum expected benchmarks in literacy and numeracy.
Urgent reforms are needed to safeguard both student wellbeing and academic integrity. This requires removing the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority, prioritising essential literacy and numeracy skills, and restoring subject integrity.
