UTC South Durham celebrated National Careers Week (2nd – 7th March 2020) with a day of activities designed to introduce students to different sectors, employers, and education providers.
A dropdown day for Year 10 students took place on Tuesday 3rd March. The event saw over ten different organisations visit UTC South Durham at Newton Aycliffe, including Costain, Gestamp, NYBEP, and the University of Sunderland.
NYBEP delivered The Trading Game, an interactive activity which taught the students about the stock market, Costain brought in VR goggles and a robotic line marker to teach students about traffic management, and talks were given by construction experts. English teacher Nik Jones also ran the UTC Careers Game, which is designed to get students thinking about how their careers choices affect their way of life, including the cost of living right through to pension age!
UTC Careers Lead Cherakee Bradley organised the event. She said:
“Here at UTC we are fully supporting National Careers Week with activities running throughout the week. We are very fortunate in being supported by industry and Higher Education to give our students outstanding careers experiences, raising aspiration, exploring the world of work and enabling students to make informed careers and education decisions as they move through their education and beyond.
National Careers Week is an ideal opportunity to raise the profile of careers although teachers and staff at UTC bring the curriculum to life all year round with careers activities, visits to industry directly linked to curriculum, highlighting skills, industry projects, work experience weeks, mock interviews, a careers club and lots more activities to expand students experiences and knowledge. Students are our future, it is so important we offer them experiences and knowledge which will help them chose a career which is right for them and one that will be accessible to them as our society and economy changes encouraging social mobility and economic growth. It’s truly brilliant to be a careers leader being part of this support for our young people.’’
