FUTURE TALENTED Spring Term 2019 - Issue 2 | Page 47

STEM
ADVICE TO
CAREERS LEADERS
Practical STEM is expensive,
but we won £4,000 over thre
e different
competitions last year with a sim
ilar low-tech, high-fun approac
h. We have
no decent machinery in school
but decided to spend most of
our funds
on craft materials. This means that
every child in every practical less
on can
be creative. We’d love to hav
e a 3D printer or a laser cutt
er, but we
don’t – nor do we see those thin
gs as priorities.
Our after-school STEM club is
so popular that we’ve had to
restrict
numbers. We currently have abo
ut a dozen teams working on
projects
across a range of competition
s. If a team gets close to a goo
d entry, the
headteacher will consider allowin
g them out of lessons to hone entr
ies and
presentations. We start off with
good ideas and bright pupils,
but we also
fully commit our time and reso
urces to help the best teams shin
e. We’ve
always done it for exceptional
athletes and footballers, so why
not for budding engineers?
BP operates in 70 countries
worldwide, finding and
producing oil and gas on
land and offshore. bp.com
STEM Learning is the largest
provider of education and
careers support in science,
technology, engineering
and maths. stem.org.uk
FUTURE TALENT // 47