Increasing Ocean Literacy (OL) was identified as essential to enable ocean protection, in the short and long term, reversing its accelerated degradation and stimulating the blue economy.

In Portugal, the Blue School is an OL program of Ministry of the Sea, which encourages schools and their teachers to work the Ocean in a formal (classroom) and non-formal context. However, the blue schools show a tendency to work the ocean outside the classroom, in approaches little focused on scientific knowledge about the ocean. There is also a very limited work of the ocean in the classroom by basic schools in general, including those in the countryside (with less adherence to the Blue School). This stems from the lack of up-to-date scientific knowledge by teachers and resources they can easily fit into students’ curricular needs. The OceanClass project aims to develop a handbook of scientific contents about the ocean and practical activities to support teachers in the classroom. The handbook is aimed at teachers from the Blue Schools and basic education in general, covering the first three basic learning cycles. The project team is composed of researchers with experience in training for OL, and will develop the OceanClass with teachers and students from three Northern Portuguese schools. The project includes holding training workshops on OL for teachers and students and ocean science days for the public. For its objectives, OceanClass contributes to UNESCO’s SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 14 (Protect Marine Life) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).