Students learning real world skills with rail firms

At the end of last year, Daventry UTC announced a new partnership with Network Rail, enabling students to experience real world engineering skills, challenges and career opportunities.

Last week, students from Daventry UTC spent a whole day working with Network Rail and ABC Electrification on a range of exciting activities designed to stretch the student’s technical and problem solving skills and to bring their learning to life. This included various activities from designing safe housing for launching an egg, interactive health and safety demonstrations on Network Rail’s Safety Bus used to train their own workforce and a fun personal protective equipment obstacle course where students were pitched against each other in a race against time to complete a given task.

Joe Dunckley, the UTC’s assistant principal said: “The workshops which Network Rail and ABC Electrification organised for our students are exactly what UTCs are all about.

“As well as studying for their GCSEs and A levels in classroom settings, our students have the opportunity to spend time with professionals from world renowned companies. These opportunities give our students the unique chance to develop and enhance their opportunities of gaining an apprenticeship with our industrial partners and within the engineering sector.”

Daventry UTC is now looking to extend the opportunity of learning from its industry partners to other local schools and the local community.

Engineering teacher Edward Perkins said: “We are now activity forging links with local companies, identifying what they require from apprentices and training our students to meet these needs. This is backed up by placing our students in suitable work experience placements to enable our partners to enhance their skills and enable them to fit in to the workplace on completion of their course.

“UTCs help to broaden students experience and expose them to different industries giving our students the unique opportunity to gain qualifications and industrial experience at the same time, allowing them on completion to be fully prepared and ready for the workplace.”

Local students and parent wising to find out more about Daventry University Technical College can visit its open evening on Wednesday March 23. More information can be found on the UTC’s website www.daventryutc.com