School children in East London have carried out their own "public consultation" into the capital's Crossrail scheme.

Eighty per cent of the Year 5 students at Christ Church School in Brick Lane were in favour of Crossrail's final route proposals

Fifteen students devised questionnaires and interviewed their fellow pupils to find out what they thought of the proposals for the local area and what the new trains should look like.

One objective was for the students to develop their literacy skills by devising questions for a purpose - reading and writing; asking questions, speaking and listening, analysing information, interpretation of data, presenting information to an audience of the entire school and visitors.

- One in four of students interviewed had not heard of the project.

- The preferred colour scheme for the rolling stock was gold with mirrored windows.

All the students involved were later presented with certificates by Crossrail consultation manager, Peter Hawes.

Peter commented: 'Young people are the passengers of the future and indeed many use trains now. We want them to feel a part of this exciting project and to listen to their views and ideas.'

The activity was held in conjunction with Crossrail’s own information round programme held at Whitechapel during February.

Crossrail has also been involved in in-school consultation with Queens Park Community School in Brent and a recent careers event for students from schools in Tower Hamlets.

At the Tower Hamlets event Crossrail was asked to participate in a careers conference by working with students from Tower Hamlets schools on careers in engineering, science and technology.

‘We presented an interactive event in which students explored the vast range of work roles available in a major project such as Crossrail – that is everything from Finance and accounting, the legal profession e.g. barristers in Parliament, publicity, through to the more obvious engineering and construction jobs,’ said Stephen Brice, Crossrail’s education adviser.

Crossrail was also asked to present Young Crossrail to the delegates, teachers and TFL people working with teachers, as an example of good practice and what could be achieved with working in the curriculum.

Earlier, a group of secondary school students from four London boroughs were the first to be offered a 10-week course in architecture and design as part of the Young Crossrail activity programme.

During the course students worked with designers, architects and engineers to develop a design brief for a new Crossrail station at Canary Wharf, an essential part of the Crossrail route.

The course, which was held at Canary Wharf from September to December 2004, was the first of its kind to be offered by the transport industry and was run in association with London Gifted and Talented, the Specialist Schools Trust and the Canary Wharf Group.

Norman Haste, Cross London Rail Links chief executive, said: 'This is a curriculum-based activity involving gifted and talented students from schools along the preferred Crossrail route. ‘

He went on: ‘We wanted to show them how interesting, stimulating and challenging engineering and planning can be. Crossrail will need around 15 per cent of the country's engineers for what will be the largest infrastructure project in Western Europe, and it is a matter of great concern that there is a shortage of engineers available now.'

Cross London Rail Links Ltd is a 50/50 joint venture company between Transport for London (TfL) and the Department for Transport (DfT).

There is a 24 hour seven day a week helpline on 0845 602 3813 and an e-mail address helpdesk at crossrail.co.uk as well as a website www.crossrail.co.uk which contains background information.

Information from Crossrail.