STEM Workshops in Worthing

Worthing's STEM history runs deeper than its seafront suggests. Beecham built a 35-acre pharmaceutical plant in the town in the early 1960s, producing phenethicillin and 6-APA, the chemical base for a new generation of semisynthetic penicillins; Beecham later passed through SmithKline Beecham into GlaxoSmithKline, and GSK still manufactures antibiotics in Worthing today. Aviation came earlier still: Worthing-born Frederick Miles led the company that became Miles Aircraft, which built the Miles Magister and Miles Master trainers ordered in their thousands for the RAF, and by the mid-1940s was designing the M.52, a supersonic aircraft powered by the then-secret Whittle jet engine, before the government cancelled the programme in 1946. Northbrook College, founded in 1890 as the Worthing School of Art and Science, later absorbed the former Chelsea College of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering in a 1986 merger.

Frederick George Miles was born in Worthing in 1903 and died there in 1976. He led the company that became Miles Aircraft, whose Miles Magister and Miles Master trainers were ordered in their thousands for the RAF. His supersonic M.52 was designed around Britain's secret early jet engines before its government contract was cancelled in 1946. Later, Worthing produced a different kind of pioneer. Emma Bunce grew up in Worthing, attending Davison High School and Worthing College, and became a space physicist specialising in the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. She served as President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2020 to 2022 and is principal investigator on the MIXS instrument aboard the BepiColombo mission to Mercury.

As of September 2026, Rayner, which describes itself as the only manufacturer of intraocular lenses in the UK, is headquartered at the Ridley Innovation Centre in Worthing, having moved its headquarters from Hove; the company made the lens for the first intraocular lens operation, performed by ophthalmologist Harold Ridley in 1949. Southern Water, the region's water and sewerage company, is also headquartered in Worthing, serving more than four million customers across Kent, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and East and West Sussex. Northbrook College, which traces its roots to 1890, now teaches a motorsport engineering foundation degree awarded by the University of Brighton.

Northbrook College, born from a merger that included the former Chelsea College of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering, now teaches a motorsport engineering foundation degree awarded by the University of Brighton. Rayner, whose Worthing headquarters is a research, training and production facility for intraocular lenses, and Southern Water, the region's water and sewerage company, are both headquartered in the town. For pupils, that means precision manufacturing and utilities engineering are working local careers, not just textbook subjects.