Spectrum Technologies

In October 2008, Spectrum Technologies and Pencoed Comprehensive School came together to form a partnership under the Business Language Champions; both the school and the business are based in Bridgend.

In January 2009, after being briefed about a forthcoming visit from Rachael Pugh, International Sales and Marketing Assistant at Spectrum Technologies, Bridgend, the pupils set about researching the company. Both the website and the marketing pack provided by Rachael formed the basis of the research.

Rachael Pugh, Sales and Marketing Assistant from Spectrum Technologies’ Head Office (pictured below) kicked off activities by visiting the school and delivering a presentation about how she uses her languages at the company.

Rachael caught the pupils’ imagination by describing her travels abroad to meet clients as well as her attendance at airshows.  The pupils discovered that Rachael is responsible for all aspects of trade with France and they were surprised to discover that the French will only buy in French!

In February 2009, the students were set a very exciting task: to design a flyer for Spectrum’s participation in the prestigious Paris Airshow 2009.  What a privilege!

The students relished this task and designed flyers which they then presented to Rachael in May. No winner was chosen as each contained very good ideas. Therefore, it was decided that the best aspects of each were to be incorporated into the final flyer.

Also in May, just before the year 11 students left to take their GCSE exams, they got the chance to visit the factory for a tour.

Louise Pearce, Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Pencoed Comprehensive School expressed how delighted the students were at seeing the machines in action and added that “they were particularly thrilled when a wire was produced with our school name printed on it!.”  The year has been very successful for both parties and they are looking forward to starting on new projects in 2009-10.

Rachael Pugh said: “I am just really happy to participate in the scheme as I think it is so important to let young people know how useful languages are and that even a small manufacturing company down the road from them uses foreign languages on a day to day basis. It is also useful to show the pupils the many different industries that use foreign languages: not only the most obvious tourism industry. I am very much looking forward to next year and working with the next group of year 11 pupils.”

A very enthusiastic Louise Pearce echoed such positive comments stating: “We have been delighted with the link between Spectrum Technologies and Pencoed Comprehensive and we plan to continue our links in the autumn in our drive to emphasise the importance of languages in business.”