Darlington primary school girls get renewable energy insights from OnPath Energy team

Pupils from a Darlington primary school have been getting an insight into onshore wind farm development from experts at a North East renewable energy firm.

The Year Five pupils at St George’s CE Academy in Middleton St George have been working on a special renewable energy module that has been developed with the help of OnPath Energy, which built and operates the nearby Moor House and Lambs Hill Wind Farms.

The project challenged the pupils to use their communication and reasoning skills to decide between a number of potential locations for an onshore wind farm using real-life data provided by the OnPath team.

And now, as part of this year’s International Women in Engineering Day, which celebrates the work of women engineers all across the world, six female pupils have visited the company’s Sunderland headquarters to find out more how the different roles that the team members have in real life match up to their work in the classroom.

The pupils also sat down with OnPath Energy staff from a range of disciplines, including electrical engineer Leah Pearson, to learn about how they’ve built their careers in the renewables sector, what they do each day and how wind turbines generate green electricity.

International Women in Engineering Day highlights the work done by female engineers around the world in an industry where women are still hugely under-represented, and to inspire the next generation, especially girls, to work in the STEM industries.

The theme of this year’s event is #EngineeringIntelligence and it is aiming to raise the profile of an engineering career as a great choice for women and girls, with an exciting future and amazing opportunities.

St George’s CE Academy is a member of Durham and Newcastle Diocesan Learning Trust (the DND Learning Trust) and is piloting this special renewable energy module alongside fellow Trust members Bishopton Redmarshall CE Primary School and Wark C of E Primary School prior to it being rolled out to other member schools.

Sarah Cox, deputy headteacher at St George’s CE Academy, says: “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.”

Julie McGrane of education consultancy Leading Learning (Education) and KnowhowEd, who designed the renewable energy decision-making unit for the schools, adds: “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.”

Sarah Cox, deputy headteacher at St George’s CE Academy

OnPath Energy is one of the UK’s leading renewables developers and currently owns or operates twelve onshore wind farms across Scotland and England.

Leah Pearson says: “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.”

For further information on International Women in Engineering Day and careers in engineering, visit https://www.inwed.org.uk/

Schools interested in accessing the renewable energy decision-making unit can contact Julie McGrane via julie@knowhowEd.com