Santander apprenticeship beckons for Milton Keynes student

Danil Clements, who attends St Paul’s Catholic School, secured a coveted spot on a summer placement with Santander following the school’s annual Work Related Learning Day.

He impressed his temporary employers so much that they have now recommended he apply for an apprenticeship.

During his placement Danil worked at Santander’s three head offices in Central Milton Keynes and at Shenley Wood. He had four mentors from the apprenticeship course and worked on a range of projects including looking at real time errors on Santander’s mobile app, fraud security, creating a website page for mortgages and finding bugs on web pages.

At the end of his placement Danil had to deliver a presentation giving feedback on his mentors, summarising what he had learned and using some management tools.

Danil said: “I really liked the work environment at Santander, their offices and the atmosphere were both great, so I am very pleased to get this fantastic opportunity to learn with them. My dad works in cyber security and, in the future, I think that this and tackling fraud are areas I’d like to work in too.”

At the moment, Danil’s focus is on preparing for his A-Levels in Computer Science and Engineering and his EPQ on internet security, which examines our safety online.

Fiona Nodwell, Head of Sixth Form at St Paul’s, said: “We are so happy that Danil’s hard work has impressed Santander and gained such positive feedback. They have told us that if they run the same programme this year (which looks likely) they will be in touch to see if we have any Year 12 students that would be interested.

“At St Paul’s we help all students to achieve their ambitions whether that be progressing to university, aspiring to a higher level apprenticeship or building their skills to help them move confidently to higher education or the workplace.”