STEM Work Experience

Our STEM Work Placements take place during the summer holidays and are designed to give year 11 or year 12 students insight into the working world in a STEM setting, with an extra-curricular work experience.

This kind of experience is invaluable for aspiring young scientists and engineers who are making decisions about their higher education and employment paths. However, it is not designed to take the place of work experience organised by schools during term time.

Employers provide a series of opportunities for students that showcase the nature of their work and raise awareness of alternative career paths, such as Higher Apprenticeships. They may also provide a real-world project or challenge for students to tackle. Students have previously used their work experience to study for a Gold Crest Award or complete a project based on the work carried out during their placement.

We have previously placed students for work experience during the summer at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology focusing on practical lab work, BMW Mini Plant Oxford to look at car production, and Magna Exteriors to see how engineering is applied practically in the consumer industry.

During the COVID pandemic, we were unable to offer work experience placements in person. We hope to be able to relaunch this programme in the summer of 2023. To stay updated please sign up to our newsletter.

STEM Summer Placements 2023

Summer placements 2023 will be available for students who have just finished year 11 or 12.

To be eligible for our STEM Summer Placements, students must:

be in school year 11 or 12 at the time of application.
attend a school in Oxfordshire or Buckinghamshire (or be within daily travelling distance of a work location in one of these counties).
be available for at least one full week during the school summer holidays (24^th of July – 1^st of September 2023).

Unfortunately, we cannot offer work placements to students in other year groups or during school term time.

This page will continue to be updated as we confirm places throughout the year. Once placements are announced you will also be able to download an application form to submit from this page.

Eleanor did a research project investigating invasive crustacea species at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Brandon did an apprenticeship placement with the Engineering department of Oxford University

Olivia did a research project with CROWN to look at whether pyrolysis could be used for coating identification

I had a great couple of days, very challenging and inspiring. I was really pleased with the level of student engagement. Thank you for your efforts and the opportunity to be involved!

John, a volunteer

Many thanks to the companies who hosted placements in 2019:

Abbott, Auberge du Chocolat, BMW Mini, Green Biologics, Chiltern Rangers, Dunn School of Pathology, Imageworks, Olamalu, Skanska, Specsavers, Viridor, Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Oxford University Engineering.