STEM in Aviation back and bigger than ever

Written by Rachel Bell, Head of Programmes – Education

This year, the ‘STEM in Aviation’ is back and bigger than ever! The flagship programme for London City Airport, with support from ELBA ran for the seventh year. We welcomed over 550 students from 22 schools to the Excel for a day focusing on STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and Future of Flight.

After a welcome from Willma Allan, Chief Financial Officer at London City Airport (LCY), the day started with seven business insight sessions, demonstrating how STEM is used in their line of work. The sessions were interactive and engaging, enabling the students to understand STEM, and be introduced to future job and apprenticeship opportunities. Thank you so much to the volunteers from the supporting companies: British Airways City Flyer, GKN Aerospace, NATS, Cirium, Embraer, University of East London and Accenture for sharing with the students.

In addition to the insight sessions for STEM and aviation, students also gained transferable skills in alignment with Skills Builder through their engagement with the business challenge in the afternoon. Throughout the day they used a combination of speaking, listening, teamwork, problem solving, creativity and aiming high to meet the task at hand, with each student having the opportunity to practise their public speaking skills.

This year had an extra element of streaming a number of presentations from the businesses , which enabled students who could not be there in person to access the content. This was able to happen due to funding received for the STEM programme from the Department of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority, ‘Reach for the Sky’ campaign.

Thank you to ExCel London for hosting, and London City Airport for continuing this incredible initiative for the students’ of East London. We are excited to see how we can develop the day for the future students involved. Finally, congratulations to our winning school, St. Pauls Way Academy and runners up, George Greens school!

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