Computer Science

Aims

The intent of the Engineering Learning area is for students to experience the widest range of engineering skills with the greatest level of excellence. Knowing our local industrial needs and requirements for University we aim to provide a journey scaffolding skills from KS4 to employment, apprenticeships or higher education in a range of Engineering Sectors. Units designed across key stages aim to introduce specialist skills at the earliest opportunity in KS4 and a first class skills based induction programme for those entering KS5 with no previous Engineering experience aims to bridge the skills gap..

Destinations

We aspire for engineering students to leave the UTC ready for the workplace and further education, competent with industry standard, state of the art equipment and machinery. We look to target our local Industry needs, upskilling students outside and above the requirements of course specification criteria. Projects use industrial based scenarios aiming to forge links with companies who they can visit to see practices learned in action. We offer opportunities for students to meet and present to potential employers, developing team collaboration skills.

Enrichment and team ethos

Opportunities available to students in Engineering are endless. Our aim is to never turn away a student if they wish for support outside of curriculum time, whether this be for more curriculum workshop support or one of our many clubs and competitions we offer. It feels like you could walk in on any evening after school and expect to see students busy around the workshop often with older students supporting younger ones. We aspire to break down classroom boundaries with students, technical support staff and teachers working together to achieve success.

Resources and Curriculum

Our curriculum intent includes BTEC Tech Award engineering and Electronics at KS4 and BTEC Engineering Diploma and T Level Engineering at KS5. Projects include a combination of online portfolio and report submissions which allows us to use a range of in house resources such as video, specialist software such as Electronics Simulation, CAD and CNC software and students can evidence their manufacture through photographs within these reports. Using online feedback and RAG rated assessment PLCs we feel provides students with fast feedback which they can act on instantly and a greater level of independence when making improvements to their work. We have aimed to design the sequences of Units to cover core skills first and then increase the level of complexity of these skills throughout Units. These units are designed collaboratively by staff and are regularly reviewed to ensure they are fit for purpose.  Units have been chosen with the intention of giving students a wide foundation and develop skills in areas such as Electronics, Secondary Machining Processes, Materials, Fabrication, Welding, Design, 3D printing, Teamwork, CAD and CNC manufacture.

Partnerships and Apprentices

We have a range of partners and constantly look to forge new links with companies, increasing our students’ exposure to employment and apprenticeship opportunities. We also have our own in-house apprenticeship programme working with our partners with some only taking on engineers from the UTC. Whilst practical lessons have a focus on quality, we also emphasise the important professional conduct and Health and Safety using industry standard machines, with an aim that any student would not look amiss in one of our local companies. 

Cross curricular and Collaboration

Through collaboration we want students to feel fully immersed in a STEM curriculum, for example students may see experiments matching what they see in Science, or learn about programming in electronics similar to Computer Science, Maths teachers teaching Engineering, even our KS5 reports use the Harvard referencing system to ensure we keep high expectations of English. We collaborate with Design and technology to design high quality and exciting KS3 Engineering based projects.