Students from Sir George Monoux College are to feature in BBC Radio 4’s Today programme over the Christmas period.

The students were interviewed on Thursday November 20 for a feature on charity Career Academies UK, which is currently running a scheme at the school.

Aimed at raising the aspirations of 16 to 19-year-olds, the charity runs business education programmes in more than 100 schools and colleges across the UK.

Dilon Beqa, 19, came to the UK from Albania in 2002 and is currently in the second year of a BTec National qualification in business at George Monoux college.

He said: “When I joined, I was doing foundation courses as I didn’t do very well in my GCSEs.

“I’ve only done year 10 and 11 and when I came here, I spoke no English.”

Through the career academy at the college, he has since done a work placement with financial services firm Morgan Stanley in Canary Wharf and he hopes to study for a degree in business and finance at Queen Mary University.

“I want to do a sandwich course with a 48-week placement and I got a really good reference from Morgan Stanley,” he said.

Valerie Bakare, 19, is currently living in Hackney and studying at the Cass School of Business in Angel.

Both she and Dilon were selected from hundreds of applicants to take part in the career academy at George Monoux college.

She said: “I came over from France in I think 2004 or 2005. My parents are from Nigeria and they studied in France.

“I was quite lucky to get an internship with the Bank of America in 2007. It was eight weeks, and one of those weeks was in Washington DC.”

Valerie, who speaks French, Spanish and Yoruba, a West African language spoken in Nigeria, as well as English, is hoping to go into investment banking - but she is wary of the current economic climate.

“We’ll just have to see how it goes,” she said.

BBC journalist Evan Davies and Sir Win Bischoff, who founded the Career Academies UK Charity in 2003, both attended Sir George Monoux on November 20.

The feature is scheduled to be included in the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 on December 30.