Students from two Oundle schools were among the teams of budding young engineers and their adult advisers from the Mid-Anglia region who presented original project work at the East of England showground on Tuesday 26 March. Each team included four or five sixth-form students, a teacher, and an engineer from a leading company.

Prince William School, partnered by the Kettering-based company Wicksteed Leisure (www.wicksteed.co.uk), was taking part in the scheme for the second time. The team of five students – Tim Arnold, Elley Black, Darryl Fox, Adam Lee and James Rudkin, helped by their teacher Clive Perkins – had worked on the design of two items, a combat cableway and a cantilever combination for use in leisure parks. All the students were unanimous in their praise of the Engineering Education Scheme. “We enjoyed the challenge of making our ideas adapt to the safety standards that you need to observe in a project like this,” said James, 16, from Easton on-the-Hill. Wicksteed Leisure’s drawing office manager Peter Godfrey said that the company was likely to be developing further the ideas that students had come up with for the combat cableway. He was full of praise for the students’ efforts, and looks forward to working with Prince William School in the future.

For Oundle School, this was its fifth year of participation in the scheme. The School has worked in previous years with Pedigree Masterfoods and Fairline Boats, and on this occasion was supported for the second year running by the Corby firm of Benteler Automotive UK. (www.benteler.de) Benteler, based in Germany, supplies many of the world’s major car manufacturers with chassis components. The Oundle team of Tommy Atkins, Tom Donlea, Philip Jackson, George Mills, and Che Hang So developed a jig to hold two components for a steering bracket used in the Vauxhall Zafira car.

Benteler’s former MD Graham Speechley, who initiated the Oundle link, is an unashamed crusader for increased links between schools and manufacturing industry. “The traditional industries are failing to encourage partnerships with local educational bodies – with less emphasis on manufacturing in schools, we need to bridge that gap!” Benteler engineer Will England, who advised Oundle’s students, was delighted with the progress that they had made in trying to solve the problems associated with the project.