"Young champions" get a taste for engineering

A Claro Precision Engineering product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 1, 2003

An enterprising project has seen Claro Precision Engineering working hand-in-hand with children from Woodlands Junior School, and both have benefited from the experience.

An enterprising project has seen Claro Precision Engineering working hand-in-hand with children from Woodlands Junior School, and both have benefited from the experience.

The outcome is that Claro now has a newly signed and improved entrance designed by the children, and equally importantly, the pupils have learnt a lot about engineering as a worthwhile future career in the process.

As a profession, engineering is facing nationwide skills shortages, and Claro, one of the UK's leading specialists in its field, is determined to do its bit to address the issue.

The company's commitment has been recognised with the recent announcement that it has been selected as a finalist in the Evening Press Business Awards 2003, in the Best Business and Education Link section.

Working in conjunction with the North Yorkshire Business and Education Partnership (NYBEP) on the "Young Champions for Enterprise" project, Claro invited children from the school and their teachers to the site to work alongside Claro Technical Director, Tim Godolphin.

The project, which encourages team work, creativity, decision making and project management, came to fruition last week with the completion of the children's designs implemented at Claro.

It was decided that the children could best put their skills to use in developing designs which would improve the immediate impression of the building - which they initially thought was boring and dull.

They worked on a number of possible designs before a favourite was chosen and Claro immediately got to work implementing the winning design which involved creating a small rockery area to the front of the building and adding new signage to improve the overall impression of the site.

The children's teacher Sharon Monaghan feels the experience has been invaluable for the children.

She says: "It has been a great project for the children to be involved in.

They have worked hard and developed new and valuable skills.

They are really pleased with the completed design, and it is great for them to see the outcome of the project they put so much effort into".

Claro's Technical Director Tim Godolphin is equally delighted with the outcome.

He says: "It's been valuable having the children come on site and see what happens in an engineering firm like Claro.

As children tend to be, they were very forthright in their comments, and it was clear that the appearance of the building reinforced their initial perceptions of engineering as a dull and boring profession.

They worked hard on a number of designs to enhance the building, and I hope they learnt a lot about engineering as a profession along the way".

He continued: "The general perception of engineering is not good and we are aware at Claro that we have a responsibility to work to improve this.

We need to ensure that young people will see engineering as a rewarding, challenging and well paid career".