In response to numerous students deferring their higher education place this year, due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the government have assembled the Higher Education Taskforce, led by the Universities Minister.
The Taskforce has worked to offer students an array of opportunities to help them gain new skills, undertake work placements in the public, private and voluntary sectors, partake in additional learning and support their career development.
Two huge names in the rail industry are offering work experience placements for students.
Network Rail will be offering work experience placements in engineering or operations management. The placement will give a unique opportunity for deferring students to see what it is like to work in the transport industry.
Details of the programme will be shared soon. The Department for Transport is proceeding to engage with industry members to find other suitable work placements which can be offered.
Transport for London is working with major infrastructure and construction partners to offer placements on a rotational basis, and also their development engineering team will support a co-ordinated placement scheme across their engineering consultancies.
Bombardier Transportation are also offering support for students. They are offering a number of work experience placements at their train manufacturing facility in Derby and at their train service depots across the UK.
These placements will be a mixture of shorter unpaid opportunities in their engineering, operations and commercial teams. Students would be mentored, and provided with opportunities to return to Bombardier for future placement while at university and upon graduation.
The government are said to hope to add to these opportunities over time and encourage organisations to get in touch who may be able to offer placements or employment over the coming year to this group of students.
