Spitfire AA810 and RAF Youth STEM Collaboration

New STEM Partnership to offer school pupils across the UK a fascinating insight into the world of aerospace and engineering.

RAF Youth STEM and the Spitfire AA810 project are delighted to announce a new partnership together in STEM and history provision in UK schools, adding to their incredible existing Education and Outreach programmes. Primarily focussed on late primary and secondary pupils, in 2023 the RAF Youth STEM Team engaged with in excess of 1.5 million youngsters through their activities across the UK. In the same year, Spitfire AA810 engaged with just under 776,000 secondary and further education students. Both projects now collaborating together in common areas offers a fantastic learning opportunity for future engineers.

"Since 2019, engaging with young people has been a huge part of the Spitfire AA810 project. By inspiring young people to learn from the past to build for their future, we use the history of the RAF and the technological development of the aircraft industry since the birth of flight to broaden the knowledge of future British engineers" said History teacher and AA810 outreach lead Onor Crummay. "This opportunity to create new and update existing learning resources and activities for the RAF Youth STEM programme is a huge privilege for us, and we are delighted that our dual-branded content will reach an even wider range of young people from this summer. By focusing on important curricular links relevant and resonant within the RAF story for school pupils across the UK, we look forward to developing this new partnership to increase pupil skill and knowledge even further."

Wg Cdr Russ Barnes, who leads the RAF Youth STEM programme said; "The RAF Youth STEM programme has been providing free, curriculum mapped support to young people since 2008. At the heart of our programme is providing opportunity where none would otherwise exist. We seek to inspire young people to continue the study of STEM subjects and, ultimately, to consider the vast array of opportunities that are available to them in the world of engineering. The scale and success of our Youth STEM programme is enabled by a wide range of partnerships and we are delighted to announce our new partnership with the Spitfire AA810 project. This partnership affords a unique opportunity to link the STEM and history curriculum’s and bring the scientific achievements of the past to life. We hope that all the students involved are inspired by the opportunity."

From their very inception, the RAF have been front and centre in technological advancement and innovation. Their contribution to the allied victory in the Second World War in particular is an important narrative that will help young people to experience a truly cross-curricular learning experience, blending history and STEM together across multiple Key Stages.