News & Resources

JLR brings engineering to life for thousands of students

6 Jul 2012

More than 2,000 school children have participated in Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) educational events promoting manufacturing careers and the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects over the past three weeks.

The company’s activities formed part of the Automotive Council’s ‘See Inside Manufacturing’ initiative, which involves businesses from automotive and other sectors running special events to show young people, teachers and careers advisers what exciting opportunities exist in 21st century manufacturing.

During the programme, JLR’s five Education Business Partnership Centres (EBPC) based at design and manufacturing sites in the West Midlands and Merseyside, hosted more than 2,000 students for work experience, plant tours and classroom activities. The pupils studied modules linked to the national curriculum such as Lean Manufacturing, Business Studies, Motor Vehicle Engineering Computer Control and Mathematics. At JLR’s Gaydon EBPC, a special event was organised for primary and secondary schools. Pupils learned about Safety Tests, Virtual Reality Build, Rapid Prototyping, teardown and Wind Tunnel testing, which are all important aspects of product development.

“JLR invests around £350,000 each year in education related programmes,” said Les Ratcliffe, Head of Community Relations for JLR.  “These Education Centres help young people gain a wider understanding of how vehicles are designed and manufactured, and hopefully inspire some to consider a future career in the automotive industry.

“Over 20,000 young people and 2,000 teachers visited the five centres in 2011, and we aim to increase this further in 2012 by marketing and promoting the centres more widely. The programme reaches students beyond those who visit the centres, as teachers take what they have learned back to the classroom to share with other children at their schools,” he added.

For more information on UK automotive ‘See Inside Manufacturing’ events, click here. To find out more about the wider government initiative, click here.

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