News

ARKWRIGHT INTERVIEWS CANCELLED

17 March 2020

CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) UPDATE - 17TH MARCH

The health, safety and wellbeing of students and colleagues is, as always, the top priority for The Smallpeice Trust. In light of the coronavirus outbreak, we are closely monitoring the situation and continue to act on advice from Public Health England (PHE) and the Department for Education. However, in these times of uncertainty, we have made the proactive decision to cancel the Scholarship interviews scheduled for this Easter.

The Smallpeice Trust remains committed to providing the brightest young leaders the best possible opportunity to pursue their dreams of changing the world through engineering. We know that our Arkwright Engineering Scholarship programmes give young people invaluable opportunities to develop life, leadership and engineering skills, which boosts confidence and prepares them for success in the future.

We understand that many of the students were looking forward to showcasing their engineering knowledge at the interview, but we believe that cancelling the interviews is the best precautionary measure to ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone involved.

This means that the decision to award a Scholarship this year will be based on the scores from the already completed student application form and aptitude test. I appreciate that many of you will be disappointed by this decision, but we strongly believe the seriousness of the pandemic necessitates this action.

Students will be notified the outcome of their application in September and we are expecting the Awards Ceremony in October / November to proceed as normal.

We take our duty of care extremely seriously and every decision is made with the best interests of your children in mind. We are following all government advice relating to the virus and if we do need to make further changes to the Scholarship programme, we will let you know as soon as possible.