Pewsey Vale students were treated to a vast array of exciting careers and post-16 choices at the annual Careers Fair held today, February 5, in the school.
Dr Mindy Howard, selected by NASA as a “Highly Qualified Astronaut Candidate”, was on hand to inspire students to follow their dreams. In 2023 she will be fulfilling her dream and going into space. After many years in the oil industry she completed commercial space training and saw the need for helping commercial astronauts to psychologically prepare for space flight.
She is passionate about mentoring young people and is a Tedx speaker whose talk is entitled ‘Train your fear away like an astronaut.’
Also at the Fair were the Avem Foundation who bring together experts to mentor young people through school and into their chosen career.
Steven Jupp is from the Avem Foundation: “Pewsey Vale School is the first school which has taken on our programme of mentoring. There a massive shortage in the UK in the areas of high tech and cyber security. We are looking to mentor young people through school and into tech and science careers. We are particularly interested in increasing the number of girls who go into these professions.”
Other local businesses included Atlantic Screen Group – Pewsey based music publishers, Airbus – the developer of the Skynet satellite from Corsham, and Cross Manufacturing from Devizes.
University of the First Age, who are the local providers of the government’s National Citizen Service programme, were there to encourage Year 11’s to participate this summer as well as running workshops throughout the day. Post-16 institutions were also well represented, giving students plenty of choices for the future.
Chantal Dean is Assistant Head and Careers Fair organiser: “As a school we are working with the Compass for Life Foundation. The Foundation is all about children finding their super north star, their big dream ambition. And it’s about helping them to establish the ethos they need to be successful, to develop them as strategists and to give them a warrior spirit and the confidence to take action.”
“The purpose of the Careers Fair is to allow students in a rural school in Wiltshire to dream big.”
