Tracked Changes: Curriculum for a Changing Climate

This article was first published in Summer 2025 in Vol 137 of the NAEE journal. The latest Environmental Education journal is available free to NAEE members.

Teach the Future, the youth-led campaign advocating for integrated, solutions-oriented climate and sustainability education, has been working towards a transformed education system in the UK since 2019. Whilst influencing wider curriculum reform – with high-impact examples including the Climate Education Bill and Shadow Curriculum and Assessment Review, and influencing the Francis Review – Teach the Future has developed Tracked Changes: Curriculum for a Changing Climate. This series of documents, based on the existing national curriculum, allows educators to embed sustainability and climate education into their teaching right now.

Tracked Changes was developed with academics and educators to review the current national curriculum through separate, subject-focused PDF documents. From Art and Design to Maths and Music, they cover Key Stages 1–3, GCSE and some A Level subjects. They were created using guiding principles focused on interconnectedness, optimism, solutions-driven content, transformative learning.

The revised curriculum demonstrates how interdisciplinary the climate crisis is, showing that every subject has a role to play in building a sustainable future and driving the societal change needed to tackle climate change. The documents show clearly how proposed changes can be made now and provide a practical tool for teachers on the ground to integrate climate and sustainability education before wider reform is put into place. They work towards:

• Students being able to appreciate the interconnectedness of living and non-living things, critically engaging with the concept of sustainability;
• Supporting students to understand eco-anxiety and helping to develop student action;
• Creative thinking fostering creative thinking through debate, learning through the environment, and more.

Teach the Future is continuing to expand Tracked Changes and share it with educators, including through the Teach the Teacher campaign. This demonstrates how even small changes can have a potentially significant impact, while also utilising the resources as an advocacy tool. The Tracked Changes documents are fully available, free of charge, on teachthefuture.uk.