Linking Careers to the Geography Curriculum with My Environment My Future

With 180 teachers registering in the during the last academic year, the My Environment My Future (MEMF) industrial-scale schools programme brings the built environment to life through the GCSE Geography “Urban Environments” module.

The Chartered Surveyors Training Trust (CSTT) is delighted to be relaunching the programme for the upcoming academic year with the hopes of extending it to the A-Level curriculum. Co-designed and created by teachers and industry professionals, the purpose of MEMF is to inspire and educate students on the impact and importance of the Built Environment that surrounds all of us, but which we take for granted. MEMF requires the students to focus and learn about their local, urban area and showcases the varied, sustainable, and rewarding careers within Construction and the Built Environment sector.

The focus of MEMF is to embed careers education into the core GCSE curriculum, with the aim of making it accessible to all young people, regardless of their circumstances, and not add to the workload of teachers. Our aim is to enrich the teaching in all schools across the UK, by providing young people with the opportunity to learn about career paths available to them. By engaging a wide audience, we hope to create a more diverse pipeline of talent entering the sector.  

MEMF is open to all young people and teachers, to use as they choose and designed to be adapted to suit different teaching styles and lesson structures. It is free to download by registering on the CSTT website, can be used in the classroom, virtually or as distance learning throughout the year. The programme contains all the content needed to meet the GCSE specification for AQA, OCR and Edexcel, including lesson plans, presentations, worksheets, and industry resources curated to complement the GCSE curriculum. We also offer an optional competition where students can make a short video or presentation, based on a local development opportunity near them as a case study. Students can showcase what they have learned about the built environment surrounding them.

As part of the programme, the CSTT will connect schools with local industry professionals to provide a talk to the students and help facilitate a site visit. Through creating these connections and building relationships between the schools and local industry, young people can be supported during and after their studies, and schools will meet the Gatsby benchmarks 4, 5 and 6 schools are required to meet.

The vast majority of the career paths in the Built Environment remain unknown to people outside the sector. We aim to change that by working with the industry to introduce the sector to young people as they start to choose their career direction. If you would like to be involved in shaping careers content within My Environment My Future, please get in contact. 

Whether you are a teacher, working in the sector, a student or also engaged in trying to open up the opportunities in the built environment to more young people, get in touch and let’s reach more of the future workforce that the sector needs to shape the next generation of the world we live in.

Aidan Conroy, Head of Geography, John Mason School, Abingdon added,

“Geography is a stretching and important part of the GCSE curriculum, valued by students and employers alike. I have been delighted to help establish this programme that brings to life the relevance of the subject to my students. The support from surveyors, their practical, real life case studies makes a real impact, and the resources available from the CSTT website have been great.”

A review from tes.com, “Really engaging, well presented and thorough resources suitable for GCSE aged students. The links to careers education were also extremely valuable and helped my school fulfil Gatsby Benchmark requirements. I hope they release more content!”

Simon Fisher, GCSE Geography Teacher, “Really good ideas. Love the links to Gatsby which is a thread I am really interested in developing. Help keeps geography real.”