[A] manufacturing apprentice from GSK Ulverston has picked up an accolade at the national School Leaver Awards held at London’s Waldorf Hilton Hotel.
Sam Coulson, 18, from Ulverston, was amongst nine youngsters who won School Leaver of the Year awards across the country.
Sam, a GSK manufacturing apprentice, has been a driving force behind the company’s local asthma awareness campaign in memory of 11-year-old Josh West from Ulverston.
The campaign, which has helped GSK apprentices secure a place in the national finals of #BAC17, the Brathay Apprentice Challenge, is aimed at young people and has involved them delivering presentations to schools, colleges and youth and sports organisations in Cumbria.
The AllAboutSchoolLeavers.co.uk’s School Leaver Awards 2017 announced winners in 36 categories, including skills development, career progression, training and company culture. The School Leaver of the Year award winners were shortlisted by an industry panel.
“I’m absolutely over the moon about winning this award,” explains Sam. “It’s not something I expected at all, and hopefully it will spur me on to achieve more and more as my career develops.”
The awards also revealed the UK’s top employers for school leavers following nationwide employee satisfaction surveys of young people working in the school leaver training world. The survey covered every aspect of their working lives, from job satisfaction and career progression, to company culture and work life balance.
GSK itself was named amongst the top 40 employers in the UK for school leavers, and was also accredited as a top employer in the science and fast moving consumer goods award category. Another GSK apprentice from Worthing, Bradley Whiting, won an award in the School Leaver of the Year category.
Terry Sandham, Apprentice Programme Manager at GSK Ulverston, says: “It’s great news for the whole apprenticeship development team here that Sam has been placed amongst a peer group of some of the most talented and highly rated school leavers in the country.
“It’s testament to all the hard work Sam has put in during his apprenticeship, as is the case with all our apprentices, to successfully bridge the gap between school and the world of industry.”
