In preparation for the Year 11 trip to the Midlands in early July, Mr Beattie delivered a fascinating talk about the places the Colloquium will be visiting, mostly but not all located in the East Midlands.
Leaving not long after the end of their GCSE exams, the group will travel first to Leicester to visit the National Space Centre and an industrial museum before heading to their accommodation in the National Forest. Day trips to Cambridge and Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes will be followed by a stop-off at Oxford and the BMW car plant on the way back to London.
After familiarising the students with the relative geographical locations of the destinations, Mr Beattie then used Oxford and Cambridge to highlight the contrasts between ancient universities and modern, cutting-edge science parks. This theme of contrast was then extended to Leicester, the site of Richard III’s tomb (the subject of an earlier scholarship talk by Mr Beattie) and the aforementioned National Space Centre, with its close links to the University of Leicester.
As a model for examining the region in more detail, he focused on the four different sectors of the economy, from primary to quaternary. Via a series of helpful graphs and pie charts, the students were able to appreciate the changing balance of these sectors in terms of employment and contribution to GDP. The relics of primary industry that were most visible to students on last year’s trip to Yorkshire will not be much seen on this trip. However, a fascinating history of car manufacturing in Oxford, culminating in the current BMW plant in Cowley, shows the importance of the secondary sector; tourism in Oxford, Cambridge and the National Forest the tertiary sector; and the science park in Cambridge and space park in Leicester are illustrative of the quaternary sector.
The students will leave on their trip in July with a greatly enhanced understanding of the economic geography of the places they will be visiting.