UTC Leeds Year 10 student Naomi knows where her future career lies: ‘From a young age I have been interested in drawing and designing. I want to go into either product design or architecture.
UTC Leeds is just one step in making it happen. I want to go to university or get a degree through a job.’ To pursue her passion, Naomi travels into Leeds from Wakefield, catching two buses a day: ‘It was a big decision to come here. When I was at my old school I relied on my parents a lot, for example, to tell me when I needed my PE kit and when I had homework, but now I’m more independent, I’ve grown up.’
On top of her core GCSEs, Naomi is studying Product Design, Geography and a high quality technical qualification in Engineering. She has really taken to the UTC model and enjoys being a student at UTC Leeds: ‘We’re all here for one reason, because we want to study Engineering or something along those lines. You know what you want to do and you have your mind set on it. At other schools there are people our age who don’t know what they want to do, so school is more just fun for them. Here, because you’re committed, they treat you like adults, like you’re sophisticated. If you don’t understand something it’s fine, they don’t expect you to. They treat you like an adult without expecting you to have the knowledge of an adult.’
