Deeplish school children test their interviewing skills

Project Manager, Shahanaz Begum

Pupils at Deeplish Primary School learnt to be biographers for the day by testing their interviewing skills on Project Manager, Shahanaz Begum.

Ms Begum works for Impact Partnership, and has project managed the recent £2.9m project to rebuild their school.

Pupils moved into their new building in January and final works are underway to landscape the external playing fields and make good the footprint of the old school, adjacent to the new building.

The questions had all been devised as part of their Literacy lessons, by the year six pupils, and were grouped into areas of interest such as, education, family life, working life and future aspirations.

Raised and educated in Rochdale, Ms Begum offered the children a chance to get an insight into her role, and shared her philosophy that: “anything is achievable.”

Laura Campbell-Starling, Assistant Headteacher at the school, said: “Some of the children had heard of the role of project manager on the TV programme, ‘The Apprentice’, but they hadn’t realised the position exists locally.

"The session was a chance for the children to be inspired, especially the girls who may not have known that a role in the construction industry is available to them”.