Brooke Weston Academy sixth form students attended an apprenticeship workshop led by Nav Kaur, from training provider Workpays, as part of a series of government funded workshops available to all secondary schools through the Apprenticeships Support and Knowledge (ASK) Programme. The programme is designed to give schools free support to develop and transform apprenticeship awareness activities, so that students, parents and teachers can be informed and inspired about the range of apprenticeship opportunities available.

Our students experienced a range of activities commonly used at apprenticeship assessment centres such as ‘two truths, one lie’ as well as team based activities which included constructing a tower from paper and sticky tape, with the brief being that it needed to be sturdy and able to support a calculator! Students also worked together to use peer assessment to provide feedback on each team’s performance in the tower building activity.  

Year 13 student, Ashton Brierley, said, ‘The workshop was really useful to us as it gave us experience of the type of activity that could be used in any apprenticeship recruitment process rather than it being industry specific.’

Post-16 Co-Curricular Coordinator, Mrs Hegarty, said, ‘The session, facilitated by Nav, was excellent and our students asked insightful questions and engaged fully in all of the activities during the session. I do very much feel that this experience has helped prepare our students with their progressing apprenticeship applications and Nav will be returning to facilitate another session focused on helping students prepare for and experience mock apprenticeship interviews.’