Winter leavers warm to workplace initiative
November 2019

CMS WINDOW SYSTEMS is working with its local North Lanarkshire Council as part of a new initiative to provide a vocational environment for school leavers to make the transition into the workplace.

The students on the ‘Winter Leavers Programme’ are using space in the CMS Innovation Hub at the company’s Castlecary HQ as a space to engage with other local businesses through work experience and training, and spend time in a workplace environment. Three of the students, who have just turned 16, are undertaking work experience with CMS directly, two in stores and one placed within the IT department.

The youngsters have all completed 4th year at secondary school but in the Scottish education system are required to stay in full-time education until Christmas 2019, because their 16th birthdays fall between October 2019 and February 2020. However, the com[any says the experience of schools across Scotland is that winter leaver students often become disengaged and feel penalised by these rules, which can have a negative impact in school on other students who have chosen to continue their education post-16.

CEO David Ritchie said: “It is crucial that we support young people who are keen to learn and develop into our future workforce, and that’s why we wanted to help North Lanarkshire Council with this excellent scheme. North Lanarkshire continues to be an excellent place for our business to be based with its fantastic communication links and a Council that is very supportive of growing businesses.

“With our Innovation Hub, we have an ideal space for the young people on this programme to base themselves as this will help them to become familiar with a real-life working environment and ease the transition from education to work.”

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