Heathrow’s Primary School Challenge, which runs starting this week until October 17th, will inspire local Year 6 students to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). This year, fifty two schools in the five surrounding boroughs to Heathrow – Ealing, Hounslow, Hillingdon, Slough and Spelthorne - and more than 3,250 students are expected to participate in the challenge, along with their teachers and parents.
During the course of The Challenge, students will receive a presentation about Heathrow’s new Terminal 2 – The Queen’s Terminal – and will have the opportunity to draw up their own inspired designs for a terminal large enough to fit six of their colleagues. Students will then use a STIXX machine, an environmentally innovative system that turns newspapers into building rods, and work in groups to translate their designs into reality.
Sundeep Sangha, Heathrow’s Economic Development Manager, says: ‘Heathrow is committed to reducing skills gaps in fields like engineering, doing our part to help our local economy, and at the same time raising academic achievements and aspirations of young people.’
As well as fitting in with curriculum Key Stage 2 structures, the Heathrow Primary School Challenge is based on the Department for Education’s guidelines for Enterprise Education. Enterprise challenge events exercise participants’ decision making, both individually and as a team, develop creativity and encourage confidence in students.
By highlighting the successful engineering story of Heathrow’s Terminal 2, the Primary School Challenge aims to encourage a new generation to explore careers in engineering and address a growing national skills gap in this field. Engineering UK* estimates that Britain needs to double the number of recruits into engineering to meet demand. They, along with key members of the engineering community, have called for the doubling of the numbers of students taking GCSE physics, a key subject and route into engineering.
Press Days for the Primary School Challenge include:
- Friday, September 19th: Our Lady of Visitation Catholic Primary School, Ealing
- Monday, September 22nd: Grange Park Junior School, Hillingdon
- Friday, October 3rd: Bedfont Primary, Hounslow
- Monday, October 6th: Marish Primary School, Slough
- Tuesday, October 14th: Ashford Park County Primary, Spelthorne
The Primary School Challenge is part of the Heathrow Community Investment Programme, which aims to support the economic prosperity of local people surrounding the airport. The main aim is to raise aspirations and academic achievement by positively engaging with local schools, colleges and universities to promote the airport as an attractive career destination to local young people, their parents and other job seekers.
Heathrow also supports skills development to reduce local unemployment levels, as well as helping local businesses to grow and thrive. Heathrow’s recently released report, ‘A Promise of Heathrow,’ committed to Heathrow promises that its expansion will double the number of apprenticeships across the airport to 10,000 by 2030 and support wider programmes to champion employability skills training in schools, should its expansion go ahead. For more information on ‘The Promise of Heathrow’ please see http://mediacentre.heathrowairport.com/Press-releases/Heathrow-expansion-to-deliver-10-000-apprenticeships-9ce.aspx
* Engineering UK’s Report 2014 can be found at http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Journals/2013/12/06/v/x/t/EngineeringUK_Report_2014.pdf
