Education has been traditionally considered as a means to promote and disseminate sustainable development through the reorientation of the curriculum towards sustainability at all levels of the educational system. Higher Education Institutions take a leading role in this process. However, they face several limitations, including their lack of training in the topic, which is complex and difficult to fit into disciplines to begin with. This paper presents the experience of the Working Group on Curricular Sustainability of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Murcia (Spain), carried out within the framework of a pilot project of teaching innovation whose objective was the incorporation of sustainability in the Degree in Economics. In doing so, a Sustainability Competency Map was drawn up and open educational resources that enable students to acquire these competencies were developed.

This study aims at creating and validating an instrument to assess the level of mastery in sustainability competencies of freshmen students in business-related studies. To reach this goal, a questionnaire that captures the level of acquisition of the competencies in sustainability is provided. A three-step process has been followed to analyse the results gathered among first-year students in two Spanish universities. First, eight confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to verify the grouping of the dimensions included in the questionnaire, resulting in 10 competency units in sustainability (CU). Next, we averaged the values of the items included in each CU to facilitate interpretation and then calculated the skill gap; that is, the difference between the level that CU students are expected to achieve on graduation compared to the current level. Third, a series of ANOVA tests were run to investigate potential differences in the level of acquisition due to gender, prior training and educational background, which according to the literature might influence current student knowledge of sustainability. Our results reveal that freshmen enter university with a heterogeneous level of development, both in terms of breadth (different CUs) and depth (the extent to which each CU is developed). The original value of this work stems from the creation of an instrument which is expected to be applicable in a variety of contexts. Additionally, the information it provides assists us in the identification of the CUs that should be further emphasized at university level, and therefore helps professors to prioritise those teaching strategies targeted at overcoming this deficit.

Quality education is a key factor to improve people’s lives and to achieve sustainable development. Using data from PISA 2009, 2012 and 2015, in this paper the level of educational poverty of the Spanish regions is calculated by applying the Adjusted Bourguignon Chakravarty index, $$B{C}^{a}$$B C a (Sánchez-García et al. in Soc Indicat Res 145(2): 479–501). A descriptive analysis of the differences in educational poverty by gender and the contribution of each region and subject to the national level of educational poverty is also provided. This information could certainly be considered a starting point to tackle educational poverty in Spain.