Costain Joins Forces With School
2 March 2010
An exciting and unusual school project, in conjunction
with Costain's A40 team in Pembrokeshire, is growing in momentum
and attracting a great deal of local media interest.
Sir Thomas Picton is a large secondary school in the County Town
of Haverfordwest and prides itself in preparing its young people
for the adult world. A big concern for this area is the number of
young people who are forced to move away to gain employment or to
go to University and its always difficult for them to return. This
is a real problem for the county's economic prosperity and the
school wants to play its part to the full.
A recent Estyn inspection has deemed the schools enterprise
efforts to be outstanding and Deputy Headteacher Tim Williams
thinks that we've come up with a cracker of a new initiative for
our Year 10 students. This is in addition to us already working
with Pembrokeshire Lottery who provides us with £2000 every year to
lend on to our sixth formers "Dragons' Den style".
Tim comments "The scheme involves us working closely with the
construction giant Costain".
The village of Robeston Wathen on the A40 is being by-passed and
will soon benefit from the absence of trunk road traffic passing
through.
The school has set up a working party to imagine a rebranding of
the village in collaboration with Costain, Pembrokeshire County
Council, the local pub, various B&Bs and the local people. The
initiative will involve site visits, sales pitches by the
pupils, company presentations and displays and some very
interesting ideas on what the village could be transformed into.
Ideas have already included a book village like Hay-on-Wye,
gambling village Las Vegas style, spa village, jazz village,
designer outlet village etc- the young people's imaginations are
the only limitations.
Phil Baker, Costain Public Liaison Officer, is working closely
with the school team to co-ordinate and participate in the launch
on 5th March, there will be two days of site visits and
a final Dragons' Den style presentation to the judging panel
on 21st May. Phil commented that he is astounded by the
interest that the project has generated, a HTV film crew covered
the first lesson where the project was explained to one class of
the year group, BBC camera crews wish to cover the launch, site
visits and the final presentations and National and local radio
stations are already covering the event.
The judging panel will consist of Costain Project Manager, Mr
Mark Young; Welsh Assembly Government Project Engineer, Mr Martyn
Leech; County Council Officers; County and Community Councillors
and local businesses. This promises to be an extremely interesting
project and builds on the strong links with local schools, Careers
Wales and Construction Skills.