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PUPILS at a Derby school learned about HS2 – the high-speed rail line built from London to the North-West – and the jobs it will create locally during a careers enterprise day.
Year 8 students at The Bemrose School also discovered the role that robots will play in the future as they welcomed visitors from Toyota and education outreach company Learn By Design, who delivered fun, hands-on workshops for the youngsters.
The idea of the day was to engage pupils in engineering, with some of the world’s biggest companies – the likes of Rolls-Royce, Alstom and Toyota – being based right here in Derby.
Beth Cartwright, of Learn by Design, delivered the session on HS2; the largest infrastructure project in Europe, which will form the backbone of Britain’s transport network.
The state-of-the-art train – capable of travelling up to 225mph - will travel through new tunnels between London and Crewe that will help connect the UK.
Ten giant tunnel boring machines will dig the 64 miles of tunnels between London and Crewe and, to get pupils thinking about the enormity of the task, they were tasked with creating a tunnel using straws and masking tape.
They were helped by Paul Mullins, senior engagement manager for HS2, who also spoke about the various career options available as a result of HS2 project.
“The idea of the Enterprise Day is to raise aspirations and to make young people aware of the career opportunities that are out there,” said Beth, “pupils at The Bemrose School may well be the ones maintaining and building the line in the future.
“Career opportunities within engineering are so vast.”
Pupils also learned about the close links that car manufacturer Toyota has with the Uttoxeter Road school, and enjoyed a robotics challenge with Learn By Design education communicator Paul Hollingshurst.
He said: “The robotics industry is expected to grow significantly over the next few years. It is already being used by companies such as Amazon and Toyota and the aim is to engage pupils and show them that humans and robots can work together.”
Claire Amos, careers manager at The Bemrose School, said:
“We’re proud of our varied and innovative careers programme here at The Bemrose School and it was great to see so many pupils engaged in the activities.”
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Written by Kerry Ganly from PR Penguin