The Formula One collaboration exciting the next generation

As colleges, we’re always looking for the best ways to help employers fill their talent pathways, at the same time as helping young people make good decisions about their futures that are aligned to where the careers will be.

As anchor institutions in our communities, we are ideally placed to fulfil these two important roles and to bring them together, to drive aspiration as early as possible.

With that in mind, at Milton Keynes College Group we are committed to the idea of joint programmes where we collaborate with specific companies to show school children the range of exciting jobs they could have in industries they might have thought out of reach.

For example, we run a programme in collaboration with Formula One Oracle Red Bull Racing called STEMx, where we go into schools; this programme has already been delivered to more than 4,000 school children of primary and secondary ages.  Pupils engage in a range of exciting tasks, including high-speed tyre and nose changes, building and racing gas-powered cars and filming post-race interviews.  They learn about the use of tools, engineering coding, teamworking, journalism and social media.  At the same time, they hear about apprenticeships and other career routes into STEM including at the Oracle Red Bull Technology Campus in Milton Keynes.  They discover what is involved in training to be a mechanic or a race engineer or a sports journalist.

The STEMx visits create a huge buzz at schools with teachers talking about children coming alive and asking excitedly about how they can take up careers in the sector.  Above all, it creates a sense among the children that aspiring to such exciting work is achievable.

There are other Formula One teams with outreach programmes but few can boast the level of inclusion STEMx achieves.  We make a point of engaging with the wider learning community, for example with home educator events where working with the home education networks venues are hired for them to come together.  We work with the Department for Work and Pensions to engage care leavers and also with non-mainstream schools.

The College is currently making plans with another employer, this time in the construction sector.  This programme will be built around the skills needed to locate, design and build a theme park – and the young people in Milton Keynes are only too aware that Universal Studios plans to do just that down the road in Bedford, so they will be able to see precisely where their futures might lie.  The details are still being worked out, but if I say as a teaser that the programme will start by sending up camera drones to survey a possible location for our theme park, you’ll get a sense of the excitement that we believe we can generate.

Other collaborations are also under consideration.  The essential pitch is simple; the employer brings the brand and the equipment, we at the College will bring the teaching and explaining skills and generate the excitement.  We are saying to businesses, if you struggle to persuade young people to consider your world as one in which they might work, let us bring those opportunities to life for you.

What matters most here is the inspiration.  If we can put even a handful of young people onto a path whereby they take up careers about which they would otherwise never have dreamed, then we’ve done our job.

By Anna Clarke, Group Director: Employer Engagement and Partnership at MK College Group