In 2006 the author was contracted to research possible approaches to a UK indicator of education for sustainable development (ESD). This article describes and seeks to explain the response of government advisers and influential members of the UK ESD community to the approaches he proposed. While the UK strategy for sustainable development called for a result indicator to show the impact of ESD on learners' knowledge and awareness of sustainable development, the indicator that was recommended to government by its advisers, after consulting the ESD community, was essentially a facilitative indicator showing the percentage of schools that rated themselves good or outstanding using a self-evaluation instrument linked to the emerging sustainable schools framework. An opportunity to monitor the impact of ESD on learners' sustainability literacy and encourage more socially critical approaches was lost as the micro-politics of ESD (the preferences of advisers and those consulted) failed to challenge the macro-politics examined in the author's earlier article. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)