SCHOOLS and businesses in Bolton and Bury are celebrating the first birthday of a successful partnership which helps young people learn more about the world of work .

Across Bolton and Bury schools have been adopted by businesses in Bolton and Bury Education Business Partnership's (EBP) Adopt a School initiative. Over the past year 14 schools in the two towns have been adopted by 10 businesses.

And in the next school year, 12 more schools and 13 more businesses are set to join the scheme.

A diverse range of businesses are involved; including Barclays Bank, Jaguar - Meads of Bolton, MFI Homeworks, Transco, Keoghs Solicitors and engineering company MBDA. Schools include both primaries and secondaries. Organisers hope the scheme will be extended to each school in Bolton.

The aim is that both the business and the school benefit from the adoption as each partnership is individually tailored to meet the needs and requests of both parties.

And charity EBP spends time matching businesses up with the right school for them.

Under the scheme, the business and school can share best practices, staff and pupil mentoring programmes can be started, businesses can sponsor creative school projects and employers can get the chance to shape the skills of tomorrow's workforce.

Bolton is only the second place in the country to develop Adopt a School and many other EBPs across the country have been looking to the town as a model on which to base their own "adoption" initiative.

Louise Silous, marketing co-ordinator at Bolton and Bury EBP said: "Under the mentoring programme, someone from business will go into the school once a month for at least an hour. The school will pick pupils they think will benefit from having a mentor. For example, it could be pupils without a role model and it is linked with boosting the youngster's self confidence and self esteem, giving them someone different from a teacher to talk to."

Already The Royal Bank of Scotland has placed 15 mentors within Rivington and Blackrod School. And in some schools mentoring is not limited to pupils - engineering firm MBDA and Mount St Joseph's senior management teams meet up regularly and mentor each other.

Schools may look to their adoptive business for advice on how to run the school as a business, for example they may share best practices on things such as management structures.

Businesses can also go into schools to see what the world of teaching is like.

"Some teachers have never been out of their profession. They don't see a lot of industry. Businesses could run professional development placements for teachers," said Louise.

There are a number of social networking events where the schools and businesses can meet up.

Children from schools can go on work experience to the adopted business and it can be a way for businesses to attract the younger age group to work for them when they leave school.

The "adoptions" are flexible and each partnership can implement their own ideas.

Louise said businesses can support specialist curriculum projects. For example, there was a competition where primary schoolchildren built buggies and raced them around Crompton Place shopping centre. The project was sponsored by Jaguar.

Mount St Joseph's School in Farnworth has been adopted by MBDA and chairman of Governors Keith Harris praised the partnership.

Mr Harris said that apprentices from MBDA had come into the school and explained technical issues to youngsters, which as well as giving the apprentices experience, it taught the youngsters something new.

MBDA has also helped Mount St Joseph's pupils with a school rocket competition -- and now the youngsters have won a trip to Russia to compete with foreign schools.

MBDA employees also help out with technical aspects at the school's weekly Aim High Academy for pupils who want to go further with their technology skills.

Mr Harris said businesses and schools can learn a lot from each other: "This school is a £3 million business. We have to make efficient use of the funds available and it is good to learn best practices from business.

"But businesses can also learn from schools. They can look at how teachers plan everything they are going to do in a day. Businesses can also learn about listening skills and see how teachers draw out the best ideas from students and coach them."

Joanne Lancaster, a solicitor at Keoghs Solicitors in Bolton has been involved in the firm's adoption of Bury CE High School.

Schoolchildren designed their corporate Christmas cards, after the school had a competition among Year 10 GCSE art students to design the card.

Keoghs also held an industry day at the school for the Year 10s. Four of them were given work placements on the basis of their interviews.

Twenty four volunteers from the firm are going to be trained as mentoring volunteers.