Labour Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson MP visited the WMG Degree Apprenticeship Centre at the University of Warwick today (Thursday 10^th February) to mark National Apprenticeship Week 2022.

Following a visit to the motorsport and advanced engineering group Prodrive earlier in the morning, where she met WMG degree apprentice Abi Holloway from the Applied Engineering Programme, Bridget Phillipson then visited the WMG Degree Apprenticeship Centre with Professor Stuart Croft, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Warwick and Professor Robin Clark, Dean of WMG and Director of Education.

The Shadow Education Secretary met with apprentices and staff for a tour of the Centre, including workshop demonstrations and live seminars before meeting local employers including Aston Martin, JLR, Royal Mail Group and Allett, as well as the Federation of Small Businesses.

Bridget Phillipson MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said:

“It was a pleasure to visit the WMG Degree Apprenticeship Centre to mark National Apprenticeship Week, and to see how businesses and education providers are working together to equip young people with the skills our country needs to prosper.

“Labour is committed to working with educators and employers to ensure young people leave education ready for work and ready for life.

“As our national skills needs develop and change, I want young people and older workers wanting to reskill to be able to access high quality, local training programmes which lead to good jobs in all parts of the UK.”

The Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership funded WMG Degree Apprenticeship Centre offers a bespoke learning environment with open spaces for collaborative and individual work, technology-enabled seminar rooms and a purpose-built laboratory for mechanical, electrical and thermal experiments.

Professor Stuart Croft, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Warwick said:

“It was a pleasure to welcome Bridget Phillipson MP to the University to share our approach to combining quality Higher Education and work-based learning. We have a responsibility to provide students with the environment they need to develop the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed to succeed while supporting business growth through their work. The WMG Degree Apprenticeship Centre is a flagship example of how this can be achieved when strategic investment is combined with industrial and academic collaboration.”

The visit also comes just a few weeks after the launch of the WMG Skills Centre, including seven new courses in technologies such as energy systems, intelligent vehicles, and digital manufacturing to meet current and future industry needs.

Professor Robin Clark, Dean of WMG and Director of Education said:

“We were delighted to welcome the Labour Shadow Education Secretary to our WMG Degree Apprenticeship Centre during National Apprenticeship Week. The visit was a great opportunity to highlight the achievements of our apprentices and to discuss future opportunities in work-based education with a panel of influential local industry partners.”

Margot James, Executive Chair at WMG, added:

“It’s great that Bridget Phillipson MP was able to meet our incredible apprentices and industry partners. She heard from them that, with the Green Industrial Revolution and the road to Net Zero leading to emerging skills needs in areas like automation, electrification and robotics, it is vital UK businesses invest in their people to encourage new-skilling, re-skilling and up-skilling.”

Many congratulations to second-year History student Xaymaca Awoyungbo, who was invited to 10 Downing Street as a finalist for the Alexander Paul Award, which celebrates the best interns participating in the first year of the 10,000 Black Interns programme. .

From this year, students taking the Law with Study Abroad in English LLB course will now have the option of taking an exchange year at our new partner university, Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. We are truly excited to add Kingston, Ontario to our overseas community - and to offer our students a chance to swap their trainers for snow boots, and Pret for poutine!

Congratulations to the Warwick Human Powered Submarine Team who received two awards and an overall commendation at the International Submarine Races (ISR16).

The competition is usually held every-other-year at the US Naval Base in Cardarock, Maryland in the US, but due to the Covid19 pandemic it was held virtually this year.

The Team was made up of seven final year engineering students, from the University of Warwick, including Gavin Ho; Phil Leiser; Jack Moore; James Grant; Alex Oortman; Karishma Patel and Vivek Suresh-Babu. The students had access to the engineering research and facilities within WMG’s engineering hall, and were supervised by WMG’s Professor Ian Tuersley and Senior Teaching Fellow Nigel Denton.

The Team competed against students from Universities across the globe and were delighted to receive ‘Honourable Mentions’ in the ‘Manoeuvring and Control Subsystem Design Challenge’ and the ‘Thrust Production Subsystem Design Challenge’ categories.

Professor Ian Tuersley said: “This is another great result from the Godiva Submarine student team. Once again they have brought back awards from the ISR, in competition against considerably more experienced international institutions. This consolidates the Warwick team as the UK champions in this hotly contended, high-profile event.”

Charlie Behrle, President of the competition organisers, the ‘Foundation for Underwater Research and Education’ (FURE) said: “With over 250 contestants representing 12 teams from three different countries participating, it was a busy and challenging event. Your team’s participation and performance were outstanding. We very much appreciate the effort your team put forth to participate in this event. Well done to Team Godiva!”

The Godiva Submarine is currently displayed, along with other University of Warwick student projects, at the Coventry Transport Museum as part of the ‘Our Future Moves’ exhibition.

Our Future Moves runs until 31st October 2021 - find out more here: Our Future Moves - Coventry Transport Museum (transport-museum.com)

The Warwick Boring Team is a student-led project designing, creating and building a tunnelling machine, which they are currently racing at Elon Musk’s tunnelling competition organised by the boring company

Congratulations to History student Karé Adenagen on winning 2 silver medals at the Tokyo Paralympics

Despite the challenge of teaching during the pandemic Warwick Law School saw its student satisfaction rate rise to 81.4% in the 2021 National Student Survey, a 6.8% increase since 2020 despite a sharp decline for the wider UK HE sector.

Good luck to current Y2 History student Kare Adenegan who is representing not just Team GB in Wheelchair Racing at the Tokyo Paralympics 202 but #TeamWarwick too.