A HOVERCRAFT-BUILDING day planned for next month will see the number of schoolage pupils helped by Foundation for Jobs since its launch two years ago top 2,300.

The event, to which all seven maintained secondary schools in Darlington have been invited to send teams, will see the pupils work with students from the town’s Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, which is hosting the day, to build working hovercraft.

It is the second year that the event, on Friday, March 7, has been held, with about 100 pupils again expected to participate, guided by a specialist team from Bradford University.

One of the key aims of Foundation for Jobs, a national award-winning youth unemployment project and a joint initiative involving Darlington Borough Council, The Northern Echo and the Darlington Partnership, was to shape young people’s understanding of industries while they are still at school.

Many pupils were not fully aware of which industries are likely to create the most jobs in the North-East in years to come or they had outdated perceptions of those industries.

They included sectors such as engineering, tourism and the digital industries.

With North-East employers set to face significant skills gaps in engineering, Foundation for Jobs is staging a series of events, including the hovercraft building day.

The aim is to give the pupils a hands-on introduction to the practical and problem-solving skills required in engineering, which many previously saw as “low-skilled and dirty work”.

It has been proven that young people who have contact with industry while at school are up to five times less likely to be unemployed at the age of 25.

Low-carbon engineering and bridge-building events have seen hundreds of Darlington students working alongside organisations such as Cummins and the Institution of Civil Engineering.

Other projects have seen pupils design digital apps and work with Durham Tees Valley Airport on a tourism activity.