Work Experience Energises Pupils with the Smallpeice Trust

Leamington Spa, United Kingdom, July 19, 2012 --(PR.com)-- From 2nd to 6th July, 14 and 15 year old students from across the UK enjoyed a unique work experience course at the National Grid Training Centre near Newark, Nottinghamshire.

Run in conjunction with the UK’s largest utility company, National Grid, this residential learning opportunity gave 50 students an insight into the future of energy and the industry as a whole. Over the five days, the lucky students worked with real engineers from National Grid to see first-hand how the supply of energy works. This included learning about the anatomy of the nation’s energy networks and taking a close up view of high-voltage substations, lines and cables.

Students also explored the scale of the ‘hardware’ used to keep our lights on and our gas flowing. This included a tour round a major power station to find out how electricity is generated and a visit to a gas compressor site to develop a deeper knowledge of how gas is moved around in volume.

Social activities included a film night and a trip to the local bowling alley. On the final night, The Smallpeice Trust and National Grid hosted a conference style dinner, attended by Phil Croft, UK Construction Alliance Manager at National Grid. Students and supervisors heard Phil speak about his career based on engineering, and had the opportunity to socialise and share their experiences of the week.

Richard Earp, National Grid’s education and skills manager commented, “The residential work experience gives us a unique opportunity to help get young people interested in science and engineering. These young people completed a range of projects and the week was again a great success. The skills and knowledge they developed will help them compete for critical jobs in the UK. National Grid is at the heart of one of the greatest challenges facing our society, the creation of new sustainable energy solutions for the future. The young people we inspire today will be our engineers of tomorrow."

Gemma Murphy, Head of Marketing and Development for The Smallpeice Trust commented, “This is the third year that we have partnered with National Grid and thanks to their generosity, we were able to give students a worthwhile opportunity to explore the diverse range of careers available at National Grid for the second time this academic year. Over the past few days, we hope to have encouraged students to not only consider the impact of climate change but to consider playing a part in tackling it and energy supply issues in the future.”

The National Grid Work Experience Week is run by National Grid in partnership with the independent charity, The Smallpeice Trust, and is part of an ongoing programme of residential courses to help young people aged 13 to 18 learn and develop skills in engineering, design, technology and manufacturing. Through running residential courses and STEM enrichment days, The Trust has reached out to 18,175 students across the UK in the past year.

The new course timetable for 2013 will be launched in the autumn school term. Places are allocated on a first come, first served basis. To find out more, visit www.smallpeicetrust.org.uk, or telephone The Smallpeice Trust on 01926 333200.

Notes to editors:

About The Smallpeice Trust:

The Smallpeice Trust is an independent charitable trust which promotes engineering as a career, primarily through the provision of residential courses for young people aged 13 to 18.

The Smallpeice Trust was founded in 1966 by Dr Cosby Smallpeice, a pioneering engineer and inventor of the Smallpeice Lathe. Following the stock market flotation of his company Martonair, Dr Smallpeice invested his energy and part of his personal fortune to set up the Trust to ensure that British industry could continuously benefit from his proven design and engineering philosophies: “Simplicity in design, economy in production.”

The Trust is now governed by an eminent board of non-executive trustees and members from a diverse range of engineering, industry, educational and professional bodies.

In the past academic year, The Smallpeice Trust has reached out to 18,175 young people through 37 different subsidised 4-day residential courses and 1-day in-school STEM Days. The Smallpeice Trust has also trained 674 teachers to enhance their delivery of STEM in the classroom.

A strong interface is maintained with industry, education and professional bodies that help to support, promote and develop the courses. Through these relationships the Trust is also able to provide a number of tailored or specialised courses.

About National Grid:

National Grid is an international electricity and gas company and one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world.

National Grid owns the high-voltage electricity transmission network in England and Wales and operates the system across Great Britain. It also owns and operates the high pressure gas transmission system in Britain and its distribution business delivers gas to 11 million homes and businesses. National Grid also has a number of related businesses such as LNG importation and storage, land remediation and metering. (Contact: Isobel Rowley, Press Officer on 01926 655275 or isobel.rowley@uk.ngrid.com)