The Duke of York has spent the day in Newcastle and Gateshead, visiting a number of local organisations connected to his work in Education and Skills.
At North East Futures UTC Newcastle, His Royal Highness met staff and students who are benefiting from the state-of-the-art University Technical College (UTC). The school, which opened in September 2018 and is open to all 14-19 students in the North East, aims to fill the skills gap in Digital Technology & Healthcare Science sectors.
UTC’s enables students to apply learning to relevant and real-life contexts, supported by cutting-edge research facilities, staff and partners. The Duke is Patron of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, which supports and promotes new and existing UTCs.
His Royal Highness also met representatives from the charity, The Common Room, which is taking forward the restoration and development of the Grade 2 listed building, Neville Hall, which is known as the Mining Institute. The charity is also preserving and archiving its internationally important collection to make it available to a wider audience through digitisation.
The Duke then travelled to Gateshead to officially open Pulsant’s new North East Office.
Pulsant is one of the UK’s leading providers of hybrid cloud solutions, and the new office will strengthen its links in the North East and will provide 100 jobs. The Gateshead office will allow Pulsant to capitalise on a fast-growing cloud market, as well as the tremendous growth in the North East.
The final visit of the day was to Komatsu, which is the world’s second largest manufacturer and supplier of construction and mining equipment. The company has a long history of encouraging young people into engineering and during the visit The Duke joined students who were taking part in STEM activities.
