How teachers and students helped shape our New Energy Academy

Packed with free, online educational resources covering everything from future-focused employability skills to engaging activities about sustainability, our New Energy Academy aims to inspire future trailblazers and showcase exciting careers in energy and sustainability.

We officially launched our curriculum-linked New Energy Academy with an engaging, fun-filled and educational day at Nottingham Forest Football Club for almost 60 students as part of National Careers Week.

But before launching our New Energy Academy on our website, we wanted to ensure that students and teachers would truly benefit from the resources. So, what better way to find out than to ask them?

We undertook research with a pilot group of students and teachers¹ ahead of the main launch to delve into their thoughts on our New Energy Academy, including what they liked and what could be better.

And we gained valuable feedback for the pilot lesson, where teachers and pupils explored the resources available for free, and to anyone, on our New Energy Academy website.

Understanding career options

After completing a lesson exploring the resources on our New Energy Academy, students said they had an improved understanding of the different career options open to them, as well as the skills needed for different career paths. In fact, over half of students (58%) said the resources actually helped improve the skills they’d need to pursue the career they want.

Learning about qualifications and skills

The students also gained more clarity on the qualifications and skills required for different careers, with 44% of students now more likely to choose a STEM subject in school to help them achieve their career aspirations.

“I was surprised how many areas I can work in, and all the different qualifications needed which was helpful. Looking at numbers and figures and how problem solving can help you in this career.” – Key Stage 3 student 

Exploring green careers

Building and developing the skills needed for a greener future is essential to fostering an appetite for building a green career.

Many students came into the lesson with little or no knowledge of green careers, but after engaging with our pilot lesson, 59% of students say they can describe what a green career involves. And when it comes to careers in the energy industry, almost two thirds (66%) of students now say they could choose to work in the energy industry.

“For [the pupils] to think about the energy sector, it's not something that they would automatically say, 'That's where I want to go, I want to work for some of the big energy companies and I want to be an engineer, or a data analyst, or a business development officer.’ For a lot of them, this would have been a bit of an eye opener in terms of types of jobs.” – School teacher 

Explaining green skills

Our research found that green skills is a challenging topic for both teachers and students to understand. By talking with the students and teachers, we learnt that green skills isn’t a term widely understood and knowledge of sustainability, net zero and the energy transition is low – three out of the four schools we surveyed struggled with the definition of green skills.

So we updated our resources to address this feedback, adding more, and clearer, definitions of key terms surrounding green skills to minimise confusion and support learning.

Improving the content

Many of the teachers and students gave us some great suggestions about how we could further improve the content. From ensuring there’s plenty of opportunities for the students to engage and interact with the resources or discuss with their classmates, to providing greater teaching options for students with additional needs – all of which we’ve taken on board.

Searching for future trailblazers

Hearing from our pilot group was invaluable to the development of our New Energy Academy and we can’t wait to see how many more young people across the UK will be inspired now it’s live.

We want young people to become trailblazers, equipped to tackle the issues they care about, and our New Energy Academy aims to do just that. To help encourage their journey, we’re currently inviting schools to participate in an exciting competition to celebrate the sustainability trailblazers who inspire their students. The most inspiring entries will earn a visit from England Football Legend Fara Williams MBE, paired with an engaging live green skills workshop delivered by our partner, Hark.

To explore our New Energy Academy and access a range of free curriculum-linked resources to develop essential skills and showcase inspiring careers in energy and sustainability, visit eonenergy.com/new-energy-academy.