Forewind

Teesside secondary school students are set to benefit from a careers education initiative announced by Forewind, development partner for the Dogger Bank offshore wind farm zone, working in partnership with the Humberside Engineering Training Association (HETA).

Called ‘Champions for Wind’ it is an innovative careers education engagement programme designed to raise awareness amongst 13 to 14 year olds of the full range of potential career opportunities in offshore wind energy and give an understanding of the qualifications and experience required to gain employment in the industry.

Being implemented by Hull-based apprenticeship training and careers education specialists HETA, the programme will start with the appointment of a network of approximately 10 secondary and special school teacher “champions” in the Teesside area, near to the onshore works for Forewind’s second stage of development, Dogger Bank Teesside. Advertisements are now being placed in local press to attract interested teacher candidates from Redcar and Cleveland, Middlesborough, Guisborough and Hartlepool.

Dogger Bank Teesside is the second stage of Forewind’s development of the Dogger Bank Zone, located 125km from the UK’s east coast. It will comprise up to four wind farms, each with a maximum installed capacity of 1.2GW. They are expected to connect to the national grid in Teesside, just south of the Tees Estuary.

Once selected each teacher “champion”, working with the careers advisors, will design and develop a curriculum-based resource relevant to their local area and appropriate to their schools on opportunities offered by the offshore wind farm industry. The teachers will deliver their resource to two to three schools each and will receive a bursary to support their work.

The first phase of Champions for Wind was a great success with more than 600 students from Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire able to gain an insight into offshore wind industry career opportunities.

Forewind General Manager, Lee Clarke said that for the UK to meet its offshore wind targets while maximising the economic benefits from manufacture, construction and operation of the Round 3 projects within or from the UK, significant numbers of skilled workers must be developed in key regions.

“By facilitating careers education for young people in the area around Dogger Bank Teesside’s onshore infrastructure, we hope to meet the needs of the local community while also supporting the wind industry by boosting the number of motivated young people entering into it,” Dr Clarke said.

The programme was designed by HETA to meet a number of criteria including: gender balance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects as well as careers; roundedness of the industry; pride, a sense of ownership and skills development in the local area; innovation; providing a vision for the future; building on any existing programmes fostering teacher development, and having a robust evaluation methodology.

Director of Educational Programmes at HETA, Mike Cargill, said ‘Champions for Wind’ will be a practical programme with input from Forewind’s owner companies - RWE npower renewables, SSE, Statoil and Statkraft – as well as The Crown Estate and other wind industry experts to ensure the teachers have access to a wide range of resources.

Requests for applications will be distributed over the coming week and interested teachers can also check www.heta.co.uk for details.

The successful “champions” being in place in early October ready for a kick-off seminar later that month. The teachers will have six months to design the programme specific to their students before it is implemented, and rolled out to other schools in the catchment area.

Ends

Contact Communications Manager, Sue Vincent on [email protected] or m: 07768 508742.

Forewind is a consortium of four leading international energy companies, committed to securing the necessary consents required for the construction and development of Dogger Bank. Forewind has agreed with The Crown Estate a target installed capacity of 9GW, though the zone has a potential for approximately 13GW, which equates to around 10 per cent of total UK electricity needs.

Dogger Bank Teesside is the second stage of Forewind’s development of the Dogger Bank Zone. It will comprise up to four wind farms, each with a maximum installed capacity of 1.2GW. They are expected to connect to the national grid in Teesside, just south of the Tees Estuary.

HETA is not for profit charity established in 1967 for the purpose of training advanced apprentices in engineering and manufacturing. It is the largest specialist training provider operating in this sector in Humberside and currently has over 600 trainees across 140 companies. HETA integrates an extensive school support programme into the apprentice training and adult training provision to inspire young people into following STEM careers and to ensure high quality information advice and guidance is provided for learners across the region.

© 2011-2016 Forewind