work experience week

For the duration of last week, Year 12 enjoyed and benefitted from the provision of work experience placements in a wide variety of sectors, companies and organisations, and this week it is the turn of our Year 10s to participate in this invaluable opportunity.

Work experience placements for our students are facilitated by working closely with employers and businesses from across the region, and they are a vital component of Careers service delivery at UGS, as Head of Careers Mrs Kinder explains:

Work Experience has been shown to have a positive impact on employability skills, motivation in education, career-decision making and knowledge of the world of work.

We are fortunate to have the support of many local businesses who provide some fantastic opportunities for our students .

We have students working in all sorts of areas and fields, from the public sector to engineering firms, local arts projects, Museums and Law firms.

Some of our regular supporters of work experience include Trafford Council, Tony Gee Engineering, Beever Struthers, Hall Brown Family Law and Apadmi.

On his placement in our lead picture is Year 12 Niall with John Mann, Infrastructure Development Manager at Trafford Council, who worked with Niall alongside colleagues including IT Customer Manager Helen Wooldridge, who here details the work experience undertaken and the positive benefits to all of this opportunity:

Trafford Council were very pleased to welcome a student from Urmston Grammar to their It & Digital Team for a week's work experience along with another student. It was an action-packed and varied week: the students were given a project to complete, and they also did some coding and made their very own e-commerce app. They learnt about key areas such as Cyber Security, the development and support of IT applications, IT project management, and website design and management.

During the week there was also a major incident where IT systems were impacted, so the students were able both to learn about, and to experience, how to work under pressure towards a resolution of problems as they rapidly emerge. The week ended with the students presenting their findings.

Year 12 Cassie 

Cassie (pictured above) also thoroughly enjoyed her placement - especially the laboratory work and getting involved in real world challenges. She worked on the formulation of products as diverse as suntan lotion to car wash liquid.

Year 10 Jonathan completed his work experience at Jodrell Bank

In an amazing opportunity Jonathan has been working at the awe-inspiring and heritage-rich Jodrell Bank space centre in Cheshire. He has been showing guests round the Visitor Centre, participating in presentations about the radio telescope and all the research carried out at Jodrell Bank, and he has also been assisting and serving customers in their gift shop. 

UGS also enjoys a long-standing association with Tony Gee Engineering and our students were this year again able to benefit from placements offered, as Phil Simmonds, Tony Gee Regional Director (Manchester) shares:

It has been incredibly rewarding to support the Urmston Grammar work experience programme over the last 6 years. As well as supporting a local school and students, it is a great for us to be able to give year 10 and 12 pupils visibility of a career in Engineering and the ways that Civil Engineers in particular can affect tangible benefit to society through our projects.

Some of our students secured placements in the Pharmaceutical sector and Year 12 Lyn shares her experience at Empire Pharmacy:

During the week, I was able to develop culturally relevant and language appropriate materials for patients and customers who arrived at the pharmacy. I have had some previous work experience in a Hospital, but this placement consolidated that as I was able to experience working with a large variety of people and to achieve a sense of personal development.

The aspect that I thoroughly enjoyed when working there was that I felt valued as an employee, due to the many roles that I was offered to fulfil, such as sorting medication into specific compartments for each patient, collecting or delivering medication, taking phone calls and interacting with both employees and patients.

I thoroughly enjoyed this experience, and I would say it is highly expedient to those who are seeking to gain an insight into how a pharmacy functions and the part it plays in the Healthcare system.

With huge thanks to all the employers who welcomed and supported our students over the course of 2 weeks, to our Careers department for facilitating these amazing opportunities and to the staff who supported students on placement visits.