National Science Week took place from 13th March – 17th March 2017. Students at the UTC South Durham worked with industry partner Modus Subsea Intervention to take part in a series of challenges which involved students building and testing subsea remotely operated vehicles. Students were given a bag of kit and basic instructions and had to work in a team to build a remote controlled subsea vehicle. Engaging students with this type of activity really highlights the different skills that they need to develop and demonstrates the variety of different engineering sectors that are available to them locally.

All of the Year 10 students had the opportunity to work with colleagues from Modus and even had the chance to speak to Tom, an ex-apprentice from Modus who has now firmly secured his position, recently being given a permanent job within the company. Lee, Year 10 student said ‘It’s really good to work with our industry partners like Modus as it gives you an insight into what their company does and you can hear about how you could work for them one day’ Ellie, Year 10 student said ‘I like doing activities like this as it not only helps you to develop lots of different skills like communication and teamwork but it also allows you to speak to people who are working in this sector every day and find out how they got the job they did’.

Jake Tompkins, Managing Director of Modus commented ‘We have such a diversity of skills that are needed in our sector that we are really focused on supporting students. It is really important we do engaging and inspiring activities such as these to really get the young people thinking about what skills you need to be an engineer but it also helps them to develop those wider work place skills that we also look for.