We were absolutely delighted last week to welcome a number of organisations into Bushey Meads to work with our year 8 students introducing them to possible careers in Science,Technology, Engineering and Maths.

Workshops covered:-

• Forensic Science led by our own outstanding Pastoral Manager Mrs Blowers who has previously worked as a Forensic Investigator. Students helped investigate a murder scene using forensic techniques.

• Established For over 180 years, Rendel has been involved in the design, engineering and construction of infrastructure projects. They have extensive experience in bridges, highways, ports, maritime, tunnels, nuclear, geotechnical and mechanical and electrical projects. Students had to use their initiative and build bridges from spaghetti and marshmallows.

• Thames Water talked through the history of water supply and the logistics involved in the supply of clean water to their 15 million customers. They also looked at how they are working towards a greener planet as well as the many different careers linked to the company.

• Danny Sullivan are a construction company with most of their projects being travel orientated including  HS2, Heathrow Airport, Crossrail etc.  They ran an experiment. ‘Flying Cupid Balloon Rocket Launcher’ to  get  pupils thinking about how things move and what it takes to get things moving. 

• Align JV Engineering, one of the major companies involved in the building of HS2. They have a history of tradition and innovation delivering transformational infrastructures and employ over 20,000 people.They talked about their organisation and brought in a virtual reality headset that students were able to use to actually be able to walk through their tunnels and around their projects.

• Funded by Shell,Energy Quest is a curriculum-linked programme for schools which encourages young people to find out all about sustainable energy and learn about associated engineering careers.  They ran two separate workshops looking at the skills that tomorrow’s engineers will need.Setting tasks including building a fruit battery.

• Working in weather and climate isn’t just about being a meteorologist – there’s a whole world of careers out there to explore. This workshop aimed to bring the work of the Met Office to life in the minds of young people, introducing some of the inspiring careers in, and influenced by, weather and climate.

• Dave Reece founded the School of Thought project to join the education and automotive sectors together and promote automotive industry career opportunities to young people in school, colleges and local communities. He gave an interactive presentation to our students raising the profile of the automotive industry.

The day was a resounding success with students all thoroughly engaged and learning from the activities.