Challenge students to shape our future
For Tomorrow's Engineers Week 2026, 9 to 13 November, we're inviting students to become engineers and tackle some of the biggest challenges facing society.
Through our Shape our future classroom resources, students will identify problems, explore ideas and design solutions that could make a difference to the world around them.
The design challenges
We’ve created 3 design challenges that tackle real-world issues we know young people care about: climate change, AI and food waste.
We're challenging students to:
Beat the heat: design a solution to keep you and your school cool in extreme heat, that doesn’t use air conditioning
Smart support: design something that Al supports humans with, makes their lives easier and / or frees up their time
Beyond the plate: design a solution to reduce food waste
Choose one for your class to complete and send us a photo of their design/s and we'll send you a certificate. Photos will be shared on social media during Tomorrow’s Engineers Week and their inventions celebrated on our website.
Each design challenge comes with:
a PowerPoint presentation with teacher notes included to support classroom delivery
2 videos of professionals setting the challenge and inspiring students with their real-world expertise
a teacher guide to make sure you understand everything needed to complete the activity, and adapt the challenge to a subject
This resource can also be used as an outline for you to adapt to your own challenge on a theme your students find particularly interesting.
Next steps into a STEM career
To support students to explore their interest in STEM, we have included, in the challenge downloads, an interactive take-home activity sheet. This is designed to help them consider their next steps.
This resource encourages young people to think about their interests, strengths and future possibilities, and introduces some of the many pathways into engineering and technology.
Stories from real engineers
Throughout the Week itself, we'll be sharing stories from engineers and technicians who are shaping the future through their work. These stories will showcase the variety of careers available across engineering and tech, inspiring students make a difference to the world through STEM.
Discover the resources
All challenges are available to download individually, so you can choose the challenge that work best for your students, or download all 3 at once. Join schools across the UK participating in Tomorrow's Engineers Week 2026 and inspire your students to discover how they can shape our future through STEM.
For many young people, the future can feel like something that happens somewhere else, done by someone else. We want to change that. Shape our future is about helping young people recognise that the future isn't something that simply happens to them. It's something they can influence, contribute to and create.
— Jo Hollingdale, Senior Careers Inspiration Manager, EngineeringUK
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