NAEE’s Curriculum Guides for Schools

Green Steel: the transition away from carbon

Manufacturing steel without huge CO2 emissions – to produce green steel – is an important industrial priority and a great challenge. This resource is aimed at secondary school science teachers. It explores what steel-makers are doing to find low-carbon and zero-carbon routes to steel.

Celebrating 10 years of NAEE Kenrick Days

NAEE’s Kenrick schools bursary scheme was set up 10 years ago. This publication marks that anniversary and celebrates the 6000th school student to benefit from the visits to environmental education centres that this facilitates. It is also a tribute to the late Anne Kenrick whose inspiring idea this was.

NAEE’s 2022 Young People’s Learning and the Environment Manifesto

The Manifesto’s purpose is to build on existing work in schools and colleges and further stimulate change in thinking and practice.  Doing this means that young people can be even better prepared to meet the social and environmental challenges they will face through their lives, and be ready to contribute to solving them. The manifesto is aimed at school and college leaders and governors, teachers, pupils and students, and is relevant to policy makers, administrators, inspectors, teacher educators, and NGO education teams. The Manifesto sets out 16 commitments that we think will help guide institutions to become more sustainable, and improve the education that pupils and students receive.  Following these, we set out four principles which the Manifesto is based on and which we think are at the heart of what is important for schools and colleges to do in relation to young people’s learning and the environment.

Schools’ key role in preparing students for green jobs

In this, we argued for all school leavers to have an essential understanding of key environmental issues. Our key point was: We call for all school leavers to have an essential understanding of key environmental issues.  We say this because a knowledge and understanding of the essence of, and background to, all this cannot be the responsibility of every employer, just as essential numeracy and literacy are not. As with literacy and numeracy, it ought to be the responsibility of schools to work with students to develop appropriate attitudes, knowledge, understanding and skills related to living and working as though nature mattered.  NAEE provided written evidence to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into Green Jobs.

The Environmental Curriculum across early years foundation stage and primary

This report illustrates how early experience of schools provides opportunities for children to explore the natural world around them and develop positive attitudes towards it.

Environmental Education and the Sustainable Development Goals

This report explores curriculum opportunities in primary and secondary schools for a consideration of the goals. It uses curriculum analysis and school and NGO case studies to stimulate further work in schools to engage young people in learning about local and global environmental issues.

The Environmental Curriculum across key stages 3 and 4

This report illustrates how the secondary curriculum provides opportunities for schools, teachers and children to explore the natural world and develop understandings of key environmental issues.

Environmental Education through STEM

NAEE has recently had this paper published in School Science Review. It explores how STEM subjects can enable students to learn about the key environmental issues that we face, using NAEE’s teacher handbooks about The Environmental Curriculum and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Developing Sustainability: helping school governors influence whole school approaches

This report explores how governing boards can help evaluate and develop their school’s approaches to environmental sustainability, posing questions that they might ask about what their school is doing. It arises from a collaboration with the National Governance Association and complements the NGA’s own guidance on sustainability, which can be downloaded here.

NAEE Annual Reviews

NAEE 2021 / 22 Review

This is a report on the work of NAEE during 2021/22. It is an account of key developments in the year, with contributions that reflect on the context in which our work is carried out that were published during the year in our journal or as blogs on the website.

Reviews of previous years can be found here: