TEACHERS have demanded the government compel schools to teach children about the climate crisis.

Lecturers from the Extinction Rebellion group handed in a letter at the Department for Education today.

The group estimates that pupils in Britain can go through school with fewer than 10 lessons on the climate crisis.

According to the letter: “In the national curriculum climate change is mentioned in passing now and then, a bullet point in a subtopic of the discrete curricula for Science and Geography.”

The group claims this breaches the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change, in which the British government signed an international treaty pledging to “enhance climate change education”.

Tim Jones, a former secondary school teacher, said: “Climate and ecological breakdown will define the life of every child and student alive today.

“They and we are facing an unimaginable catastrophe.

“But it’s hard for students to take the issue seriously when it plays almost no part in the content of their education.”

Oliver Hayes, a former teacher and Head of Department, said: “It is clear from scenes from September – with millions of children taking to the streets across the world – that children are standing up and saying enough is enough.

“Worryingly, this emergency has been almost ignored in teaching, especially in state secondary schools.

“It is taught as a difficult, peripheral and distant issue.

“Students need to know not only the truth about what is happening to their planet but also what needs to be done about it.”