A teachers perspective
When I speak with professionals from the Built Environment, they always express surprise that students do not know more about the routes into the sector, that teachers are not researching them and that parents are not encouraging them. Everyone knows there are lots of great jobs out there after all, don’t they? Well no they don’t! Let me explain and give you a quick overview of education in mainstream secondary schools in 2025-26.
As a geography teacher, my last GCSE cohort consisted of 31 children, 27 of whom were boys. Of the 31, 10 had actually chosen geography when selecting their GCSEs from the required “Bucket 2” subjects under the Progress 8 System (Geography, history, computer science, languages are in Bucket 2). The other 21 students had to choose one of them, but most didn’t actually fancy anything in Bucket 2; for them Geography is the lesser of the 4 evils. Of my 27 boys, 9 have gone onto study in areas that will probably lead them in the Built Environment, however to get on a level 2 plumbing, brick-laying, joinery or plastering course at college, they only needed a grade 3 across their subjects (apart from English and Maths). Therefore, despite being students who could have achieved 5, 6,7 or even 8s in their GCSEs, they settled for the least amount of work and got those 3s.
If I had known the 1000s of roles on offer in the BE sector or had a series of resources with BE careers built into them, maybe I could have steered some of those young men into different areas of the industry or motivated them to try for better grades? Into that heady mix, throw what have to be “aspirational targets” from the school, and an education performance management system that is at best punitive, and you have a system that does not provide time or incentive to spend on such trivial things as the rest of a child’s life!
The newly revised Careers Guidance from the Dept for Education (Sept 2025) puts a greater emphasis on subjects and teachers to deliver careers to all students from the age of 11. This may seem like an obvious thing for teachers to already be doing; surely one of the reasons to go into teaching is to ensure that the children in our care have bright and glittering futures?
The sad reality today, and especially post-pandemic, is that teachers are squeezed by a requirement to deliver a knowledge filled curriculum to a cohort of students (and their parents) for whom school holds less importance than ever before. It is of course, the very social disconnect with education and the increasing amounts of so-called EBSA and EBLA (emotionally based school and lesson avoidance) that makes the new changes in careers guidance all the more important! Add into this the SEND Crisis you may have heard about in the press and the shortage of trained professionals across all parts of the educational sector and the vital importance of MEMF in ensuring that our young people understand all of the opportunities that are available to them, starts to become clear.
My school delivers over 20 food packages to families in need every fortnight and provides vouchers to see them through the holidays; take a minute to consider that schools are unofficial foodbanks! This takes teacher time and energy away from teaching. Part of the solution is in careers-laden teaching resources, like MEMF, that are vital to help lift aspirations and our children away from poverty.
I am not rare in having worked 10-12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week for about 46 weeks a year to meet the daily delivery of lessons alongside the untrained-for and unexpected roles of social worker, counsellor, police person, accounts manager, mediator and parental advisor! Don’t get me wrong, I adored my job teaching, BUT finding the time to build a professional pathway for my geography students was not high on my priority list when even my own child doesn’t get time with me each day.
The MEMF National Competition has been in place for 5 years and from a teacher’s perspective is a great resource and vehicle to explore sustainability, but how and when does thinking about that fit in amongst the 12-hour days to meet the above requirements of the job? Maybe this is how someone in the BE sector, like you, could help?
The Key Stage 4 (GCSE) and 5 (A-Level) resources have been in place for four years, and we are now launching the resources for Key Stage 3 (for ages 11-14) and Key Stage 2 (for ages 8-10 in Primary) to complement them and in doing so re-launch all of our resources in line with the new OFSTED guidance. The resources can save teachers hours of time as they are already written to meet the GATSBY Standard 4 and provide teachers and hence pupils with quality, Built Environment careers advice.
But to really make a difference, to really ensure that the sector is receiving the best of the best candidates, and that we are serving our young people as well as we can, we need more from the companies of the Built Environment.
The hard-nosed message is that we need more funding to allow us to keep providing schools the free and editable resources that will enable teachers to deliver the quality careers advice; but we also need investments of time:
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- Are you able and willing to answer our quick 15 minute survey to help us build more careers profiles? https://forms.gle/BXdMTk6pdgXXeSFXA real life case studies are really important to young people and you will have a story to tell.
- Will you make the opportunity to introduce MEMF and the competition to your children’s school, a school you are visiting because of a S106 project, or as an ambassador for the sector?
- Will you support a careers event (breakfast, open day, festival) and become a key link with the sector for a school?
- Will you give us a case study of how a geographer has thrived in your business?
- Adopt MEMF as your company’s preferred charity for fundraising or volunteer days?
- Will you put your hands in your pockets and donate to us?
Each of these makes a difference to us and the work we can do and it will make a difference to the lives of young people. Help us create the diverse pipeline of talent the Built Environment needs to meet skills gaps and challenges it faces.
Get in touch info@memf.careers