A selected group of 19 Year 10 pupils were put into three separate groups and tasked with designing and producing a bespoke piece of garden furniture, the winning piece would be displayed in the school reception area.
The project was run over 2 full days at NULC’s £6million Skills & Technology Centre, during the build process, the students got to try their hands at Bricklaying, Bench Joinery, Painting & Decorating and Electrical Installation.
NULC Joinery lecturer and Project Coordinator Chris Johnstone set a design brief that involved working out costings for materials, exact measurements for the furniture piece and learning how important numeracy is in the skilled trades.
The pupils worked in small groups and were given a current NULC Construction student to act as mentor during the build. An important aspect of the project was to give the pupils an opportunity to speak to current construction students about how maths is used in further education and how they will use these skills in industry.
After two hard days graft, the pieces were finished and a winner was decided by NULC’s Curriculum Manager for Construction & Engineering Steven Michael. The teams were scored out of 28 for each ‘trade’ for example Electrical, Bricklaying and Painting.
The winning team included pupils: Nathan Jones, Kurtis Davies, Taylor O’Connor, Aqib Mohammed and Dale Willatt.
This was the first time that a project has been done in this way before and there are plans to expand the format to include more schools in the future.
Martin Ebsworth
Head of Science and Technology
The co-operative academy of Stoke on-Trent
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