News and Events
Cambridge University Press & Assessment celebrates World Book Day with sustainability-themed local community event
As World Book Day celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary on Thursday, 3 March, Cambridge University Press & Assessment welcomed students from three local state schools to an event in Cambridge.
Since 2014, Cambridge University Press has taken the opportunity to celebrate World Book Day with the local community, in partnership with Form the Future, to open up access to hundreds of young people, with the aim of demystifying the industry.
After a pause in 2021 (the last event was in March 2020), we opened our doors once again to Year 9 and 10 students for an event designed to learn more about the wide range of jobs their people do. Students had the opportunity to create a marketing plan for the bestselling book There is No Planet B, by Mike Berners-Lee, as well as plan a presentation for their Head Teacher and Board of Governors, on bringing about change in their school in relation to a green theme, which links to our UK exam board OCR’s, development of a green curriculum.
Students presented their ideas to the whole group, before taking part in a ‘careers carousel’, when they had the opportunity to interview colleagues from across the whole organisation. This year, students met people working in business change; business development; business ethics and legal; communications; editorial; equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging; examinations; procurement, project management, marketing and social media, sustainability; and stakeholder relations and events. They also met colleagues who joined through apprenticeships and the Kickstart programme, as well as members of the organisation’s Young Employee Network.
Olivia Tolley from North Cambridge Academy (NCA) said:
Thank you so much for organising and running the event – our students thoroughly enjoyed it and got lots from it. They were really buzzing on the way back!
Maisha, a student from North Cambridge Academy said: “I really enjoyed all the activities, and the insights on careers was very useful.” Another student, Ellie, also from NCA, said the day was full of “fun activities and lovely people”.
Head of sustainability at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Vicky Evans, said:
We love being able to share our experiences as professionals, but what made this event so invaluable is the opportunity for learners to tell us about what is important to them. We were so impressed and inspired by the innovativeness of their ideas for how they could make change happen in their school communities. They gave us all so many things to think about.
Senior Marketing Executive, Academic, at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Chloe Bradley, said:
We were blown away by the enthusiasm and knowledge of the students. They are clearly very conversant about issues around sustainability and want to be included in decision making and efforts to help our planet, which was demonstrated by their tasks. We could certainly learn a few things from these young minds.
Head of community engagement at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Heidi Mulvey, said:
It’s always such a pleasure seeing students’ confidence grow across the day. Increasingly, sustainability is an integral part of everything we do, and these two environmentally themed activities reflect that. Having a taster of the kinds of work we do and talking to so many people about their varied and often zigzag routes in, is both reassuring and inspiring. We really hope it will encourage students to consider publishing and assessment in future.
