OnPath inspires future female engineers

A renewable energy company is helping primary school pupils explore careers in engineering through a hands-on learning programme focused on green energy.

OnPath Energy welcomed six Year Five pupils from St George’s CE Academy in Middleton St George to its Sunderland headquarters as part of International Women in Engineering Day.

The visit followed a renewable energy module developed with support from OnPath Energy, which challenged pupils to assess potential locations for an onshore wind farm using real-world data.

During the visit, the pupils met employees from across the business, including engineers and renewable energy specialists, to learn more about careers in the sector and how wind farms generate electricity.

The initiative is designed to encourage young people, particularly girls, to consider future opportunities in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects.

Leah Pearson, electrical engineer at OnPath Energy, said: “Fewer than one in six engineers in the UK are women, so we wanted to use International Women in Engineering Day to share more information about the opportunities that the sector presents and to encourage more North East children, particularly girls, to think about the STEM careers that are open to them.

“It’s been great to be able to help the school with this important project and we especially enjoyed having the children visit our offices.

“We were really impressed with the range of interesting and thoughtful questions they had for us and hope they will all look carefully at maybe one day following the STEM career path that many of our team members have chosen.”

Julie McGrane, director at education consultancy Leading Learning (Education) and co-founder of knowhowEd, who designed the renewable energy decision-making unit for the schools, added: “Sustainability is becoming an ever-more important part of the school curriculum, and this module was designed to give the pupils insights into a topic that they are going to be aware of right through their lives.

“It provides primary school geographers with a real life, authentic decision-making exercise, which is an especially important skill for this subject.

“Being able to work with a developer like OnPath Energy and gaining access to meaningful regional data and project information brought an extra dimension to the children’s work, and we couldn’t have asked for more support and involvement from the OnPath team.”

St George’s CE Academy is piloting the renewable energy module alongside Bishopton Redmarshall CE Primary School and Wark C of E Primary School through the Durham and Newcastle Diocesan Learning Trust, with plans for a wider rollout across member schools.

Sarah Cox, deputy headteacher at St George’s CE Academy, added: “The children have loved working on this topic and have worked really well together in using the material in front of them to reach carefully considered conclusions.

“They’ve been fully engaged with the information presented to them and clear on how they were going to approach the tasks that they were set together, with a huge amount of thought and effort going into their conclusions.”

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