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 12,000 students from 750 secondary schools every year
• In 2008, the Wakefield Education Centre hosted its 30,000th student and East Kilbride its 15,000th student.

Qualified teachers employed directly by CCE run the Centres. Each Centre has a fully equipped interactive classroom and offers curriculum-based educational activities, as well as an insight into CCE's 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.

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. Teachers and partner organisations have given positive feedback on the role that the Centres play in meeting this requirement.

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

Award winning

In 2008, our Education Centres won Gold in the Education category of the Food and Drink Federation awards.

They also received a 'commendation' at the Manufacturing Excellence awards ceremony and are a finalist for the prestigious Merrill Lynch Investing in Young People award, presented by Business in the Community.