By Katherine Sellgren BBC News Online education staff

The aim is to give students "real life" skills

"Design and make a product to stop Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine pipework catching on the airframe of Harrier jump jets during installation."

This is the latest brief for two gap-year students from Bristol who have turned down travelling the world for taking on engineering contracts like this one.

Alex Thompson, 19, and Iain Purvis, 18, are employed by their former school, John Cabot City Technology College, as teaching assistants as well as young engineers.

The pair receive education bursaries of �250 a month for a three-day week and help GCSE and A-levels pupils with their assignments as well as taking on projects from industry.

Iain says the scheme has been "invaluable"

Their work so far has included designing and building a commemorative bench for a churchyard and producing 200 trophies for the school's celebration of achievement awards.

The trophies were so professional that a local rugby club commissioned a batch of 100 for its awards ceremonies.

Now the youngsters are busy working on their solution to the Pegasus jet engine installation problem.

Bridging the gaps

Staff at John Cabot CTC hope the scheme, which began with four pupils last year, will help technology students make the most of their gap year - and help bridge the gap between industry and education.

"With this latest contract from Rolls-Royce, they have to come up with project plans and charts and they have fortnightly progress meeting with an engineer from Rolls-Royce," said the head of technology, Nathan Jenkins.

Alex was looking for an alternative type of gap year

The school principal, David Carter, says there has been an emphasis in recent years on a content-driven curriculum in schools, which has neglected real life skills such as communication, problem-solving and budget management.

"And if you've got a relationship with students, there's a fantastic resource there to allow them to put something back into the college," said Mr Carter.

In the meantime, Alex and Iain are happy to build up their CVs.

"I didn't want to go straight to university, so I was wondering what to do with my gap year," said Alex, who starts a degree in creative music technology at the University of the West of England in the autumn.

"With this I could earn some money and get a good CV. Not many university students can say they've been doing this in their gap year - it's unique."

"I'm not sure there are many people our age who can say they've worked for Rolls-Royce," said Iain, who is off to Plymouth University to study computing informatics.

"It's been invaluable. I could say I've been travelling, or I could say I've done all this."

Freeing up time for teachers

The scheme not only benefits students such as Alex and Iain, the school also gains.

The CTC Plus initiative brought in �10,000 last year and has a projected revenue of �21,000 next year.

The money is channelled back into the school.

The success of these plaques led to a contract with a local rugby club

"It allows us to buy industry-standard manufacturing equipment," said Mr Jenkins.

"And it also frees up time for me and my staff to work with other students or develop other projects.

"For example, I might have 60 GCSE pupils who need to use the machines. Whereas before I would have to go and sit there with them, now I don't because Alex and Iain do that.

"They can also learn about new software packages quicker than we can, so they put together tutorials for teachers on that. It's a skills transfer process."

The scheme also allows Mr Jenkins and his staff to keep up to date with developments in industry.

"This scheme frees up teachers' time to allow them to go and spend some time in industry developing their skills."

But also, one of the reasons the school loses teachers is that they want to do something fresh.

For deputy principal Nick Jones, CTC Plus proves a useful means of retaining good people.

"We don't want teachers at Cabot to be tempted elsewhere," he said.

"From a managerial point of view, this is a great way to keep hold of staff."