“Warrington UTC was the first to trial the In-form system. The process enabled 2 of our students who hadn’t previously been successful with their applications to gain apprenticeship interviews with a major international construction company.”

“In-form provides social mobility opportunities for young people where they may otherwise have not had them. The skills feedback they receive is crucial to future employment, schools can build a picture of how their young people perform in the workplace to help improve them in the future and businesses are able to link their work placement and apprenticeship recruitment programmes.”

“I had work experience with Highways England and although it was virtual I gained all off the skills I would have from an in person work experience. In the mornings we had guest speakers who helped further my knowledge about the industry and in the afternoons we had to work on a project which gave me a great taster of what a career in construction could entail. Overall I think my work experience was amazing and I definitely enjoyed it.”

“For my work experience, I had 2 mentors from this company, Andrew and Steph, who were both welcoming and informative. It can be strange working online with people you've not met before, but they made the experience fun and ensured that I developed some skills and got pushed to do better. Even through they had meetings and their own personal commitments, they put the time and effort to make my group's presentation more technical. I definitely enjoyed working with them and would look forward to working for Highways England.”

“This past week I did some work experience with Highways England. Since I will be applying to university this year, I wanted to see if engineering was the right path for me, and this work experience really helped me develop my interest in the career and now I am more confident that this is what I want to pursue. Despite being online, Highways England ensured that the sessions were interactive and we were able to get a feel of what it takes to plan, design, build and pitch an idea.”

“Rachael Groves was a fantastic mentor for my group in the Highways England VWEX and motivated us to create a high quality presentation. Also, she encouraged us to think about different aspects of construction that we may not have originally considered such as the name of the company and its significance leading to us following the same level of detailed thinking in each aspect of the project we worked on. Rachael created a good atmosphere in the group by focusing each member to learn more about each member in our group which resulted in a great chemistry between each member in the group allowing for a high quality work output. Overall, this resulted in a project that we are very proud of. Thank you to Rachael bringing your very helpful expertise to the work experience.”

“My team and I are very grateful to have Ellen as a mentor throughout our virtual work experience. when we first started our project, the members of our team had never spoken to each other before and often had to use social media to communicate rather then actually speak to each other. But Ellen encouraged us finally break the ice and speak to each other properly. Ellen truly embodied what it meant to be a mentor, informing us of our strengths and teaching us how to improve on our weaknesses. Our team never would have made it as far as we did without her guidance, so thank you so much Ellen!”