Navy News
Direct from the front-line, the official newspaper of the Royal Navy, Navy News, brings you the latest news, features and award winning photos every month.
MOD apprentices inspire school children engineers
19 May 2016
Young engineers from HM Naval Base Devonport in Plymouth helped inspire children to create their own mini vehicles to encourage them to study science, technology and maths towards possible engineering careers.
The Ministry of Defence engineering apprentices organised a six-week programme at a Saltash school near Plymouth, as part of the national push to address the current and predicted future shortage of young UK scientists and engineers.
This initiative, called STEM is supported by the MOD and industrial partner Babcock at Devonport who rely on a steady supply of new engineers to sustain the high-tech engineering on-site.
Twenty pupils from Saltash Community School were mentored by the apprentices into planning, designing, costing, developing and trialling a working model vehicle to transport pretend waste material.
A school spokesman said “The students were genuinely engaged and enthusiastic about the challenge and came up with original ideas.
"It was fantastic to see them developing solutions to problems and persevering.
"All of the students had a great deal of fun, but it has also awakened an interest in careers in engineering and physics for the future.”
The pupils were split into teams of five to work collaboratively to see who could come up with the best design to be tested in week six.
They then competed to find the invention which travelled the furthest. The apprentice team scored each team on the set criteria and result of the race.