Education Centres

As part of our commitment to educating young people about business and enterprise, we've established three Education Centres at our manufacturing sites in:

• East Kilbride
• Edmonton
• Wakefield.

The Centres help secondary school students to develop their knowledge and understanding of the world of work. They also provide a good enterprise education opportunity for local schools and teachers.

• Together the three Centres now provide enterprise education to over 15,000 students from 750 secondary schools every year.
• In 2008, the Wakefield education centre hosted its 30,000th student and in 2009 East Kilbride its 20,000th student.

Qualified teachers employed directly by Coca-Cola Enterprises run the centres. Each Centre has a fully equipped interactive classroom and offers curriculum-based educational activities to support the teaching of a variety of subjects including Business Studies, Science, ICT, Engineering and Design & Technology, as well as an insight into Coca-Cola Enterprises' production processes.

During a typical two-hour session, students study:

• Bottling and manufacturing
• Raw materials
• Distribution
• Recycling
• Sales and marketing

They can also take a guided tour of the manufacturing site and see the production process in action.

In July 2011 Coca-Cola Enterprises launched a brand new £750,000 Education Centre at its Sidcup site, Kent.  The new centre aims to host over 200 visits per year, reaching over 4,000 students from local secondary schools, colleges and universities.  The centre has been developed as part of Coca-Cola Enterprises' "Olympic Games legacy", located at the Sidcup site which will play a pivotal role in supplying soft drinks to the Olympic park in Stratford for the London 2012 Olympics.

"The Sidcup Education Centre is a fantastic educational facility that will offer students a unique insight into manufacturing.  It will help teach the importance of sustainability and support the teaching of a broad range of subjects.  It's good to see that delivering an outstanding community education programme is part of Coca-Cola's ambition for their London 2012 Olympic Legacy"

Nick Fuller, Head of Education at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG)

Supporting government requirements

The initiative is fully aligned to the Government's enterprise education agenda, which requires students to receive five days of work-related learning per year.  In 2010, over 41,400 students completed an educational programme with us and 100% of teachers said they would recommend the visit.  Teachers and partner organisations have given positive feedback on the role that Centres play in meeting this requirement.

As well as providing an important learning opportunity outside of the classroom environment, each Centre also provides teacher support materials, which can be used to enhance and expand on students' learning.

Award winning

In 2010, our Education programmes won Gold in the Education category of the Food and Drink Federation awards and were re-accredited with Business in the Community's 'Big Tick' Award.

Future Centres

We plan to continue to develop our education centres so that all of our manufacturing sites have these excellent facilities. A new centre at Sidcup will open in July 2011 and later in the year at our new joint venture PET recycling facility, which is currently being built in Lincolnshire. The centres require considerable capital investment and we have to prioritise their development. Although a decision on where to build our next education centre has not yet been made, plans for centres at other sites have been assessed for their practicality and cost.