Engineering education programme
The education programme supports our client Electricity North West (ENW) by delivering an education and safety awareness programme known as Bright Sparks.
Overall, Bright Sparks enhances the delivery of regulatory obligations to raise safety awareness of the electricity network with young people and our performance is measured by the ESQR report to OFGEM.
Working with education business partnerships and SETNET partners, we contract former electrical engineers, physics graduates, and seconded schools. The continued success of the Bright Sparks programme is due to the science curriculum enhancement, work-related learning and the custom made circuit boards it provides for student investigation. The programme also provides an excellent transition into Key Stage 3 secondary education and provides a framework for engagement with selected high schools.
Results 2008/ 2009
Our education programme is supporting our creation of strategic partnerships with specialist secondary schools and the development of a talent pipeline for our company. Our education team has a history of collaborative working with the education sector. Now we’ve refined this further, working with selected high schools to provide a framework of targeted activities to enhance the science, technology and engineering curriculum at KS3/4.
The objective is to attract more young people to study these subjects at higher level and ultimately into careers, at all entry levels, but with a stronger focus on apprentice recruitment over the next ten years. The education team, working with new intake of electrical engineering graduates, has developed a graduate mentoring programme for selected partner schools.
This support has resulted in engineering workshops, 'engineering your future' days, career awareness presentations and after school science clubs. Our graduates provide excellent role models for talent attraction and we intend to continue and extend this mentoring programme by using the talent of our apprentices in vocational recruitment.
- 8305 key Stage 2 Students took part in the Bright Sparks programme.
- 800 Key Stage 3 / 4 / 5 students engaged with United Utilities' education programme