Project Qualification The Young Green Briton Challenge
Do you want to embed sustainability and climate education into your curriculum? Are you looking for Gatsby Benchmark aligned opportunities to build employability skills, including communication, collaboration and creative problem solving? Are you wanting to empower your students to take action on issues that matter to them and create positive change in their local communities?
Empower your students as future leaders in climate action
The Young Green Briton Challenge (YGBC) is a fantastic action orientated programme, which when delivered through a Pearson Edexcel Project Qualification, is helping schools deliver on their sustainability and climate action plan initiatives, through a recognised and valuable qualification for students.
What is the Young Green Briton Challenge?
The Young Green Briton Challenge is a project- based learning programme that nurtures, supports and celebrates youth-led, school-based climate action. This exciting initiative combines climate education with innovation, design, and changemaking. The Challenge empowers students to create local climate action projects, fostering the development of transferable green skills, and for the past three years has been growing in popularity within UK schools.
Each participating school selects a whole year group (typically Key Stage 3) to participate. Students start by exploring real life sustainability topics including biodiversity loss, food, the future of transport, green energy, the circular economy and fast fashion. Students then work in teams to select an issue and design entrepreneurial solutions to address this issue locally. These could be community projects, products, awareness campaigns or even mini businesses. The most promising teams go on to put their ideas into action, creating real change in their communities. One team from each school has the opportunity to enter the National Challenge, showcasing their ideas at a regional event in the summer term.
YGBC is accredited by the Skills Builder Partnership and aligned with Gatsby Benchmarks 4 and 5, supporting students to develop key employability skills through project-based learning.
Project Qualifications provide teachers with the opportunity to accredit project-based activities taking place in their centre. They are accessible to students typically aged between 11 and 16 years old and can be submitted through three distinct routes: a report, a performance, or an artefact.
Wherever an individual or team project is taking place, a project qualification can be used to capture this activity, to award students with a formal qualification that recognises their engagement in project based climate action activity, be it in curriculum time or through extracurricular activity. For many students, a project qualification is their first opportunity to take a formal qualification and a great way to prepare them for any GCSE or vocational courses that lie ahead.
The Young Green Briton Challenge is a nationally coordinated programme delivering a project- based school opportunity which is perfectly aligned to the Pearson Edexcel Project qualification submission requirements for either the Level 1 Foundation Project Qualification or the Level 2 Higher Project Qualification. As a carefully planned and sequenced programme, the YGBC provides the necessary opportunities needed for students to capture the evidence requirements for a Pearson Edexcel Project Qualification.
Equivalent to half a GCSE, a Project Qualification will enable students competing in the YGBC to:
- structure and communicate their work to an audience;
- further develop the skills associated with research, creativity and problem solving;
- create a piece of work that is personal to their own learning journey through the challenge, centred upon the topic of climate action.
A Project Qualification is the perfect vehicle to capture the independent research taking place, develop the skill of critical thinking, and evidence the creative journey that takes the team from identifying the initial problem to reflecting on the solution that was implemented within the school, local area or community.
Delivering the Young Green Briton Challenge (YGBC) and a Pearson Edexcel Project Qualification
Below are two distinct delivery models for completing a Pearson Edexcel Project Qualification through the YGBC.
- Sign up to one of the fully funded Young Green Briton Challenge school spaces for the academic year 2025-26 (email: info@ygbc.uk )
- Select the year group to participate (suitable for Year groups 7-11)
- Launch the programme by delivering between 2-6 hours of YGBC’s introductory curriculum materials to the whole year group
- Host a design workshop, where the YGBC team visit and run a drop-down day to the whole year group
- Identify groups/students who will capture their project work as a Pearson Edexcel Project Qualification (this could be an additional timetabled class for a subgroup of students or be available to the whole year group)
- Identify the students who will be entered for the FPQ and who will be entered for the HPQ
What is the difference between a Foundation, Higher and Extended Project Qualification?
- Teachers mark the Project Qualification submissions, and submit a sample of entries for moderation in May
- Pearson Edexcel moderate the sample of entries, and grades are awarded in August at the same time as GCSE and vocational qualifications.
Classroom time: Through completion of the programmes directed hours and the students' independent work on the YGBC, the programme will take approximately 60 hours, including time allocated to capture and compile the Project Qualification evidence.
- Identify a curriculum opportunity for the YGBC (e.g. within Geography, D&T or Art lessons) or an extra-curricular opportunity (e.g. lunchtime, afterschool, enrichment option) where students can complete the approximate 60 hours of activity
- Sign up to a YGBC CPD session for 2025-26 (email: info@ygbc.uk )
- Use the prepared YGBC curriculum materials to deliver the programme over a period of roughly 20 taught hours and 40 hours of independent/application time (i.e. carrying out the project individually or in teams, project write up time, attending any competition dates)
- Identify from the student submissions, which are best submitted for the FPQ and which are best submitted for the HPQ
What is the difference between a Foundation, Higher and Extended Project Qualification?
- Teachers mark their students’ Projects and submit their sample in May
- Pearson Edexcel moderate the sample, and grades are awarded in August at the same time as GCSE and vocational qualifications.
The YGBC encourages students to work in teams to build their collaboration skills. However, evidence for the Project Qualification is submitted individually, with each student needing to complete separate evidence in order to demonstrate their role and contribution to the team. This enables students within the same team to:
- receive different grades
- enter for different levels (either level 1 or level 2 depending on the strength of the evidence).
Guidance on how to manage team projects through a Project Qualification can be found in the Pearson Edexcel Asynchronous PQ course materials found as a YouTube playlist.
The YGBC and Pearson Edexcel Project Qualification combined programme is ideally suited to a wide variety of different school settings, including mainstream, specialist and alternative provision centres. Whilst Project Qualifications are openly available to private/independent schools, the funded YGBC programme is not open to private school entry.
To find out more about YGBC and enquire about participating in the next year of the challenge;
The Young Green Briton Challenge is a powerful collaboration born from the shared vision of four organisations: Social Innovation for All, GenEarth, Ministry of Eco Education and the Green Britain Foundation. United by a passion for climate action and youth empowerment, they came together in 2022 with a simple yet ambitious goal: to create something bigger than they could achieve alone.
In 2024/25 Pearson Edexcel joined forces with YGBC to support schools keen to pilot the accreditation of the YGBC through Pearson Edexcel Project Qualifications, bringing together the world of social innovation and qualifications for the first time. Schools taking part in this pilot had a number of years experience completing the YGBC, and saw the opportunity of a formal qualification as the natural next step in their engagement in this climate action programme.
Belle Vue, part of the Co-op academy trust, were one of the schools keen to take that next step into a formal qualification which recognised the brilliant work students produce throughout the challenge. The school delivers the YGBC with the whole of Year 8. Teams are then tasked with pitching their ideas in order to continue their project through the highly popular YGBC club, which is part of the timetabled Year 8 curriculum enrichment programme. These teams go on to complete the final pieces of evidence that are required for a Project Qualification whilst also competing in the YGBC.
Read more about their experience
Hear from Head of Geography, Helen Allsopp-Medley about her experience of delivering a project qualification
From October, you will be able to follow the link below to access student FPQ and HPQ exemplars submitted as part of the YGBC and Pearson Edexcel Project Qualification programme in 2025. These exemplars include a range of evidence, and were completed by Year 8 students taking part in the Core YGBC programme.
Explore the Project Qualification Exemplar library
Inspire me: what kind of projects can students develop?
A Project Qualification allows students to work in teams, with each taking responsibility for one part of the overall project. This could see students looking at different aspects of sustainability, and bringing them to life through a wide range of solutions. Students have the choice to design futuristic solutions, for example a new energy source for a school building, or to explore biodiversity by creating or improving a school pond. Students could set up a school gardening club as an event, making planters and managing the plants there, or could run an event by hosting a fashion swap shop. Students could develop a campaign to encourage more sustainable school transport or more responsible food waste management, or simply help the school community conserve and make better use or water. The options are endless, and a Project Qualification could capture and accredit each and every one of these ideas.
The following YGBC YouTube playlist showcases 11 different projects from the YGBC alumni, to give you a flavour of the variety of creative ideas students have come up with in the past. The possibilities are endless!
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