Year 7 and 8 students from Ditton Park Academy, Herschel Grammar School, Garth Hill College and Lynch Hill Enterprise Academy were invited by Learning to Work to explore labour market information (LMI), STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) careers, and the opportunities that can be sourced locally at Mars Wrigley in Slough. 
 
Slough’s *Mars Wrigley factory hosted the event where students were challenged to build a Lego robot almost from scratch and program it to win a race on a Lego racetrack. The students were placed into 12 teams of 4, with every student in a team being from a different school. This activity gave a taster of a real first day at work, working with a team of strangers. A volunteer from Mars mentored each group of students throughout the day. 
 
This event had an added advantage for students as it met the following Gatsby Benchmarks. Benchmark 2 ‘learning from career and labour market information’, Benchmark 4 ‘linking the curriculum learning to careers’, Benchmark 5 ‘encounters with employers and employees’ and Benchmark 6 ‘experience of workplaces’ 
 
*Slough Mars Wrigley have been awarded Rank 1 in the UK’s best Super Large (+1,000 employees) workplace for women in 2019 as well as Rank 5 in the UK’s best Super Large workplace in 2019. 
 
Contact us if you need more information on the Gatsby Benchmark and how Learning to work can help you. 
Tagged as: Mentoring, STEM, Volunteering
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