Schools Engagement

Primary Engineer (Junior School Programme)

Supported by several rail companies across the UK the Primary Engineer Rail initiative consists of two projects; one for key stage 1 and one key stage 2 pupils. Primary Engineer work with cohorts of 10+ schools from a specific location/region. Teachers from each school are trained to deliver the projects with sponsoring organisations supporting the delivery in school (usually one or two days in total).

Rail Forum work with rail companies local to our HQ to sponsor a cohort of schools and we also aim to put companies who want to support schools in different parts of the UK together so that they can support a cohort local to them. To find out more please contact elaine@railforum.uk

iRail (Secondary School Programme)

Established some 15 years ago iRail originally comprised a STEM challenge day with schools coming together to see what the rail industry has to offer by way of careers and to undertake the iRail challenge. The popular iRail challenge day was paused during, and immediately post the pandemic, and we plan to re-establish this in the near future.

Working with our partners we have now developed a suite of iRail branded lessons and an enterprise project that can be delivered in-school by teachers to enable us to reach a wider number of schools and pupils. These lessons are FREE to access and use by teachers. The lessons are all rail themed and map to the national curriculum. They come with a full set of resources; lessons plans, presentations, exercises, workbooks and videos showcasing young people and their careers in rail. All lessons can be delivered in one hour and all come with extension exercises for a longer two-hour session.

Lessons and the project can be delivered stand-alone or they can be combined to provide a more in-depth appreciation of rail.

The lesson files can be found below. A login will be required to download the materials.

iRail Lesson Files

All materials are provided by and copyright Rail Forum. Materials may be freely reproduced for use in lessons. For any other purpose approval from Rail Forum is required.