International Women in Engineering Day is an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and focuses attention on the amazing career opportunities available to girls in this exciting industry.

We celebrated this day on 11th June involving 90 girls across key stage three to take part in the ‘Gimme’ event hosted by Nissan. Gimme (Girls in Monozukuri, Manufacturing and Engineering) is a set of focused activities to encourage girls to consider careers in manufacturing and engineering. The girls learned about some of the alarming statistics about the uptake of engineering by girls and the fact that the North East alone is expected to have 20,000 vacancies in Manufacturing and Engineering in the next 5 years.

In the afternoon the girls came back to school for an afternoon of activities building spaghetti towers (which were later tested by an earthquake and wind test for stability) with the assistance of 3 engineers who talked about their pathways and inspirations for embarking on their chosen career pathways.

Here are some quotes for the day:-

“I am more aware that women can be engineers’

“Today showed me all of the jobs that you can do in the engineering industry”

“It was nice seeing women in engineering roles today”

“We learned about the different jobs at Nissan and some history about the company”

British Science Day 2019 at Newminster Middle School

On Friday 15th March, we had our annual British Science day. This has become somewhat of a Newminster tradition now. British Science Week is a 10-day programme of thousands of events running throughout the whole of the UK with the aim of celebrating science, engineering, technology and maths. The aim of the day was to

• Raise the profile of science and technology in the school and wider community
• Learn about careers in STEM
• To get pupils  interested and thinking about STEM subjects (a little more!)

We are very fortunate that we had STEM Ambassadors who contributed from a range of sectors and made the day very special. Here is an outline of the workshops that took place. Each student participated in 5 workshops.

Mrs Razzaqi would like to say a huge thank you to all of our STEM Ambassadors (some of whom are also parents) for travelling to us and offering a chance for the students to get involved in stimulating  activities as well as having the opportunity to find out about careers in STEM. If you would like to help us out for BSW 2020 please get in touch with Mrs Razzaqi via the school office.

Here are some quotes..

“I learnt a lot about science, working as a team and communication skills. I loved it all!

“This was a very interesting and educational day; my favourite parts were where you could get involved in a practical manner. I learnt about engineering and how science helps to invent medicine and cure disease.”

“I learnt so much about careers that I had not previously heard about and I would now like to study science further. The DNA and CSI investigations were active and great fun.”

On Friday 19th October, Local Councillors were invited into school, as part of ‘Local Democracy Week 2018’ to offer Year Seven Students the opportunity to pose questions to a panel of County Councillors.

Councillor Beynon, Councillor Towns, Councillor  Byard and Councillor Tebbbutt were keen to engage with our students and offer an insight into their own roles as well as tackling local issues. This project was delivered in collaboration with the Northumberland Youth Service.

On Friday 5th October, Year 8 students entered the world of work and for the first time ever, the annual Careers Conference took place at Linden Hall.

The core purpose of the day was to provide students with the opportunity to engage with employers from a range of different sectors.  The day is a central part of the careers programme for Year 8 students as they will soon embark on their journey towards high school education and be required to make GCSE choices very early on.  We hope that this day. along with various other planned events in Year 8 will help prepare the students to make informed career choices for the future.  The event highlighted alternative careers pathways such as apprenticeships as well as the more traditional routes into employment.

The careers speed dating session involved students grilling employers and Business Ambassadors from a range of local employment sectors to get a flavour of career pathways and typical working days.

The afternoon workshops were delivered by Northumberland Fire and Rescue, Police, RAF and the Navy.  The workshops highlighted all of the different roles in various organisations as well as key skills needed to be successful and addressed common misconceptions.

Liz Kinninment, Headteacher at Newminster Middle School, gave a keynote speech to launch the day’s activities.

“At Newminster we are committed to encouraging students to think about their future careers from a very early stage.  Being able to offer students the opportunity to experience a live working environment like this is invaluable.  The experience certainly opens their eyes to the possibilities available and will hopefully help inspire their future career choices.”

The conference day was delivered in partnership with Northumberland Business and Education Partnership and we would like to thank all of the businesses that made the day a success.

Contributors for the speed dating activity included

• NCC
• NCC Apprentices
• Newcastle College
• Interserve
• Newcastle University
• HMRC
• RAF
• Northumberland Fire & Rescue Service
• Police Service
• British Army
• Robertsons

Here is what the students had to say:

“There are a lot more job opportunities in some jobs that you wouldn’t expect”

“It was an inspiring day”

” I have a new understanding of my future career”