Raising the bar for future engineers

Currently, almost half of young people leave secondary school with little or no hands-on experience in the real working world. Despite the far-reaching benefits of work experience, its availability remains inconsistent. Approximately half of state school students leave without any experiences of the workplace, and almost half of those who do secure placements rely on their family or social networks to access them. However it’s not all doom and gloom, as a result of this minimal uptake a wider, national campaign with The Hg Foundation and social mobility charity – Speakers for Schools was launched.

Established in 2010, Speakers for Schools helps connect state-educated students to industry through invaluable work experience placements and career workshops, delivering regular sessions to over 2,703 registered schools. Recently partnering with The Hg Foundation and UK- based businesses across a scale of industries, sizes, and structures, the charity is currently driving ‘IntoTech’ – a UK based tech programme for under 16s that aims to create over 95,000 opportunities for underrepresented young people.


To help change the narrative when it comes to work experience in schools, Big Bite were asked to create an online interactive workshop that showcased the opportunities in the world of tech to young students across the UK, as well as demonstrating the practical skills and tools needed to excel in the sector.

Working with WordPress

The online workshop, which welcomed 99 students from the breadth of the UK, delved into the world of WordPress and provided an in-depth tutorial on how to successfully build a site from scratch.

Michael Bertram, Engineering Mentor at Big Bite, created the four hour workshop with tangible results in mind, ensuring at the end of the session each students had made headway in building a WordPress website.

From helping students understand and take advantage of WordPress’s full site editing capabilities to editing themes, creating patterns and templates, the workshop gave students many new skills that they could easily apply to future roles and projects.

“Working as a teacher in my previous role, I’ve always been passionate about supporting and providing opportunities for young people, whilst valuing what industry-based learning can bring to them. It sets them for the future and not only gives them a real insight into industry, but it significantly improves students’ skillset with more practical experience that can quite often be applied to any sector.”

The session received great feedback from attendees, with a 92% satisfaction rate among students who also stated they felt confident the skills gained will help them toward their future career goals.

Helen, Account Manager at Speaker for Schools, champions the importance of connecting state-educated students with real-world experiences:

“We are delighted to have Big Bite involved in our Into Tech Programme, to help young people get a real feel of what is entailed in the world of technology, specifically web development. We had some amazing feedback from the young people involved and are excited to work with Big Bite again in the future.”