Pupils get hands-on challenge

Apprentices working at an aerospace engineering company have developed a new course bringing together a diverse mix of students to take part in a STEM project.

The team at Leonardo created the programme with the aim of providing an introductory experience to the world of work and to try to inspire students to take up a career in STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The students included Logan Matheson, 15, from Dunfermline High School in Fife, who is now considering a career in engineering following the success of the course.

He said: “My favourite part of this week has probably been learning about building bridges.

“I found that quite interesting learning how everything works.

“Something that was really important was using triangles for its construction, as it is a really strong shape.

“There was stuff you wouldn’t consider like the length of the bridge impacts its strength.

“Instead of just hearing about it, I found that actually seeing it makes a much bigger impact

“I’m only in S5 just now so I’m probably going to stay on another year, but I’m definitely going to consider engineering, as I find it quite interesting and I’m going to see if I can get this type of job.”

The course was intended to act as a fast-track way to gain experience of mixing the pupils with both peers and professionals from different backgrounds to complete a challenging project.

Jackie Ritchie, who lead the course, said: “Something dynamic happened this time that was unlike previous courses.

“The students only had a few days to come up with a solution to protect the supplies and safety of a fictional country.

“To do that they had to take on identities defined by their roles in the project team.”

Sarah Devlin, second year Indirect Procurement graduate apprentice, gave each student information on their roles and over the course of a week, helped them co-ordinate meetings in the run up to their final presentation.

Sarah said: “In our day-to-day roles we work with quite a variety of people and we are a diverse company, more so than most engineering companies I think.

“It is good to mirror that in the work experience, so they can actually see the different roles they can take.”

COURSE: Logan Matheson has been inspired to study engineering.