Students visit building site for inspiration

The students were able to use diggers and bulldozers on the Daventry building site

Engineering students had drone and bulldozer demonstrations at a training facility next to a real construction site to encourage them into the construction industry.

The youngsters from Northampton College had the experience as part of ongoing expansion work at the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT).

Industry body Engineering UK said about a quarter of all job vacancies in Britain were engineering-based.

Kayleigh Merritt, from construction company Winvic, which was working at DIRFT, said: "Real companies make so much of a difference because they can talk about what they do every day."

Kayleigh Merritt from Winvic said schoolchildren should learn more about construction and engineering

The BTEC construction students were the first to visit the site in the partnership between Winvic and Northampton College.

Ms Merritt, the Northampton-based construction company's talent development manager, said: "It's not simulated. It's not role play. It's not pretend. It's real life.

"It's showing them what they [would] do on a day-to-day basis and being there to ask questions about the difficulties and what they enjoy."

She said with the use of new technology, such as drones and tablets, "construction is so different to what it used to be 20 years ago".

The college students were shown how drones were used on bulding sites

Those in the construction industry said demand for engineers would grow over the next five years and there were calls for it to be on the school curriculum.

Ms Merritt said: "If we trained children from a young age about the different roles within construction, there would probably be an uptake when they finish their GCSEs."

Paul Bailey, from Northampton College, said: "I'm quite passionate about these sort of connections because building is building, but it's moving on in so many of the disciplines with the [new] technology."

The construction teacher said visiting the building site and seeing the new technology also "helps me keep updated and it helps convey that within my teaching".

Construction and built environment teacher, Paul Bailey, said visits to real building sites helped him and his students keep up with new technology

The Department for Education said there were already GCSEs in engineering and electronics available.

It added it was also rolling out new T Level qualifications in engineering and manufacturing, establishing 21 institutes of technology to deliver higher-level science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) training.

This had involved working with employers to develop more than 350 STEM apprenticeships.