Chew Valley School, Backwell School and Gordano School, part of the Lighthouse Schools Partnership, are the first of three West of England schools to win a new grant to encourage local youngsters to consider green careers.
Metro Mayor Dan Norris visited the school during his second Jobs and Skills Summit to meet some of the students taking part.
The schools beat off stiff competition to receive a grant of £15,000 from the West of England Combined Authority, led by the Metro Mayor, to develop a special environmental careers programme.
Students will learn how green jobs offer an exciting and rewarding future across four weekly sessions. The young people will find out about the huge range of green jobs on offer from wind turbine technician roles to opportunities in green finance and get top tips on how to access useful and relevant work experience.
A recent study by social mobility charity Speakers for School showed young people have a real appetite for pursuing green jobs but that 56% were not sure about the required skills to get one.
Metro Mayor Dan Norris said: “Our amazing West of England is changing before our eyes. Jobs nobody had even thought about ten years ago about are springing up, while others are rapidly changing. Take the electric car revolution or the phasing out of gas boilers and you can see in a flash that mechanics and heating engineers are going to need a completely new skills set. In my manifesto, I pledged 23,000 green jobs so I'm pleased a £45,000 cash injection from the West of England Combined Authority I lead is helping talented young people to identify and access good-quality green jobs. Chew Valley, Backwell and Gordano schools are trailblazers here and I hope to use their success to roll out this green careers programme much further across the West.”
The Metro Mayor’s second Jobs and Skills Summit Metro Mayor Dan Norris focused on raising the profile of green jobs across sectors, showcasing green career opportunities for local people and hearing from the region’s green workers helping the region transition to net zero.
On the summit day, in addition to meeting students at Chew Valley School, the Metro Mayor met workers in the Bristol’s retrofit industry; South Gloucestershire companies developing new green technologies and trade unions working to green West of England workplaces.
