Treviglas Academy and Naked Solar Collaborate to Bring Modern Work Experience to Life
Treviglas Academy has partnered with Newquay-based renewable energy company Naked Solar to give Year 8 students a practical insight into Cornwall’s growing renewable energy sector through an innovative Modern Work Experience session.
The collaboration brings together the expertise of education and industry to create a meaningful experience that goes beyond a traditional employer talk, enabling students to explore a sector, experience different roles, develop employability skills and apply their learning to a realistic workplace challenge.
The partnership began following discussions between Treviglas Careers Leader Laura Ford and Jacob from Naked Solar at a Careers Hub Careers Summit. The conversations focused on how schools and employers could work together to put the principles of the Modern Work Experience Benchmarks into practice.
The result was a bespoke session delivered as part of Treviglas Academy’s Year 8 Growth Sector Day, where students experienced five different sector-focused Modern Work Experience activities across the day.
Bringing the renewable energy sector into the classroom
During the Naked Solar session, students were introduced to Cornwall’s renewable energy sector and explored how different roles contribute to the successful delivery of a customer project.
Working in teams, students took on responsibilities linked to four different business functions:
Energy assessment
Design
Surveying
Sales
Each team completed a different part of the challenge before bringing their work together to respond to a customer brief.
The activity gave students an opportunity to see how different departments within a business depend on one another, while developing communication, collaboration, problem-solving, decision-making and other employability skills.
Importantly, students were not simply told about careers in renewable energy. They were given the opportunity to experience elements of the work itself, helping them understand both the roles available and the skills required to succeed within the sector.
Laura Ford, Careers Leader at Treviglas Academy, said:
“We want our careers programme to provide meaningful experiences of work rather than simply a series of employer encounters. Working with employers allows us to combine our understanding of young people and learning with their expertise of industry and the workplace.
“Working with Jacob ensured that students were given accurate labour market information about renewable energy and could understand why it is an important and growing sector in Cornwall. The session also allowed students to experience different roles within a company and develop the skills needed across different departments before bringing their work together as a team to meet a customer’s expectations.”
Measuring the impact
The impact of the experience is being captured through student reflection and feedback using Unifrog, ensuring that the employer encounter becomes part of students’ wider careers learning rather than an isolated event.
Following the Growth Sector Day:
95% of students reported that they had a better understanding of Cornwall’s growth sectors.
87% of students reported that they could explain the skills employers are looking for.
Through Unifrog, students can also reflect on the sectors and roles they have explored, identify the employability skills they demonstrated, recognise areas they need to develop and set actions to continue researching careers and progression pathways.
The learning will then be revisited throughout the academic year through Treviglas Academy’s tutor careers programme. Students will use the Careers Hub Cornwall Industries Guide to explore labour market information, growth sectors, different occupations and progression opportunities.
This creates a clear progression from employer encounter, to reflection, to further research and action, helping students build their understanding of the world of work over time.
A partnership that works for schools and employers
For Naked Solar, the project also demonstrated how local employers can make a meaningful contribution to careers education without having to create an entirely new programme of activities from scratch each time they work with a school.
Jacob from Naked Solar said:
“We had an excellent day with the Year 8 students at Treviglas, and their engagement was brilliant throughout. Being able to reach an entire year group in a single day is something we really value as a local employer.
“As an SME, finding the time to plan sessions like this can be tricky. Laura made it much easier by being in touch months in advance with the schedule of careers activities and by being on hand to answer my questions while I was putting the resources together for the Growth Sector Day.
“We planned it carefully around the new benchmarks, with group activities encouraging teamwork and real-life examples simulating the kind of problem-solving needed throughout the renewables sector. This was the first of what will hopefully be many school partnerships!”
The collaboration also provides a sustainable model for employer engagement. The sessions developed with Naked Solar can be refined and potentially shared with other schools, reducing the need for employers to develop completely new activities each time they engage with young people.
The project demonstrates how schools and employers can use their respective expertise to address one of the key challenges of careers education: providing meaningful experiences of work to large numbers of young people.
Rather than asking businesses simply to provide more traditional work placements, the partnership model creates purposeful, structured and scalable experiences that give students genuine insight into workplaces while making effective use of employers’ time and expertise.
For Treviglas Academy, the partnership reflects a wider commitment to ensuring that careers education is not an isolated programme of events, but an ongoing part of students’ education — connecting curriculum learning, employer encounters, labour market information, employability skills and future pathways.