The Conversation: Vocational GCSEs won’t arrive until 2029 – but clean energy skills can be found in the curriculum now

Over the next few months, most year nine pupils in England (aged 13–14) will choose their GCSE options. For those curious about the jobs behind the clean energy systems, heat pumps, electric cars and buses now appearing on their streets, the government’s new vocational GCSEs will arrive just too late.

The Department for Education announced the new qualifications in September 2026. They will have nationally set content, with assessment and grading regulated by Ofqual, the exams regulator in England. The first are set to be available in some subjects from as early as September 2029.

By then, today’s year nines will have sat their GCSEs and today’s year eights will be halfway through their courses.

Nevertheless, a good deal of the groundwork for a clean energy career is already taught at GCSE. It is just spread across several subjects, so pupils and parents need to know where to look.

At the University of Salford’s Centre for Sustainable Innovation, I lead research on electric cars that can send power back to buildings and the grid. It calls on electricians, engineers, programmers and people who understand energy markets, and the first steps towards each of those jobs are already in GCSE subject content.

Science and geography

The most widely taught material sits in GCSE science, which almost every pupil takes, either as combined science or as separate physics, chemistry and biology. The combined science subject content asks pupils to describe energy sources, from fossil fuels to wind, the tides and the sun, compare how they are used, and tell renewable from non-renewable.

Pupils also learn why the national grid carries power at high voltage, how an appliance’s power depends on current and voltage and what the earth wire does in a mains circuit. Much of the physics behind electric cars and heat pumps is there, though neither is named.

Geography, a popular option, adds the human side. Its subject content covers how societies obtain food, energy and water, with a detailed study of one of the three, including its sustainable use and management at different scales.

Design and technology

Design and technology goes a step further. Its subject content requires pupils to understand how energy is generated and stored, so they can choose the right source to power a product, and to apply the basic principles of life cycle assessment, which tallies a product’s environmental impact from raw materials to disposal.

Half the marks come from a project in which each pupil designs and makes a prototype. Exam boards set new contexts each year, and the Department for Education’s suggested list includes “securing a sustainable future”. Pupils write their own design brief in response, so where a context allows, a sustainable energy project is well within reach.

Electronics and engineering

GCSE electronics and engineering come closest to the hardware side, although few schools offer them. The electronics subject content teaches pupils to build circuits that sense, decide and act, to switch power with transistors and to program microcontrollers that respond to sensors. They also learn how diodes turn alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) – a step needed to charge any battery from the power grid.

For their assessed project, pupils write their own brief and then build a system to meet it. A circuit that switches on a small load only when a light sensor detects sunshine would be a simple version of the diverters that send spare rooftop solar power to a hot water tank.

Engineering pupils write programs that monitor and control systems. They also learn that designs must take account of energy production methods, maintenance and end of life, and they study engineering’s impact on the environment.

Economics and business

The money questions belong here. GCSE economics covers how supply and demand set prices, which is why some electricity tariffs now charge different rates at different times of day. It also covers externalities, the costs and benefits that fall on people outside a transaction, and the policies governments use to correct them. Economists use the same idea to analyse carbon taxes and clean energy subsidies.

GCSE business includes the impact of environmental considerations on firms, sustainability among them, along with cash-flow forecasting and business start-ups. A pupil who hopes to run an installation business one day would find much of the groundwork here.

Joining the dots

Much clean energy work happens where people live. You cannot install a heat pump in Salford from anywhere else. The government’s Clean Energy Jobs Plan expects employment in the sector to double to 860,000 by 2030, with plumbers, electricians and welders among its priority occupations.

Pupils need three things to join the dots: education, exposure and experience. The education is in place. Teachers need no new specification to use a charger or a heat pump as a worked example, and families can ask at options evenings whether coursework can take a clean energy theme. To help families prepare, I have built a free interactive online tool, the Sustainable Local Energy Skills Roadmap, which turns four questions into a personal map from GCSE topics to clean energy jobs.

Exposure means meeting the people who do these jobs. Talks from local installers and visits to university energy labs show pupils what the topics lead to. Experience is where the government’s call for 200,000 extra work experience placements for pupils aged 14 to 16 comes in. Installers, network companies and bus operators are natural hosts for this.

Early suggestions for vocational GCSE subjects include digital tech as well as building and construction, both close to clean energy work. The government says local leaders, employers, schools and colleges will help choose the final list, with a consultation due later this year, so clean energy employers and colleges have good reason to respond.

For pupils now in year eight and above, the subjects are already on the timetable. The heat pumps and electric car chargers on their own street are a good place to start connecting them.