Teach the children well
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Attitudes to manufacturing are gradually changing in the UK. It’s something we’re now being told regularly by people in industry. Whether it’s the understanding that the country needs to focus more on making things and less on financial services; the increasing popularity of television programmes about science and technology; or the series of high-profile major engineering projects currently underway in the UK at the moment; there definitely seems to be a feeling that we haven’t seen for quite a long time.
The general public is coming around to the idea that engineering and technology are interesting, valuable things, rather than old-fashioned and dirty, and even politicians seem to be queuing up to say how keen they are to support engineering and innovation in the UK. There are even signs of some joined-up policy thinking in the sector.
And yet we still have a skills gap. It’s not just the UK — we’ve spoken to German, Dutch, French and Scandinavian engineers over the past few months and they’ve mostly told us the same story. There was a lull in engineering recruitment and in the number of students applying for technology courses that lasted several decades, the average age of engineers is going up, and there still aren’t enough new engineers entering the profession to counter the number that are going to be leaving as they reach retirement. Meanwhile, the emerging Asian economies are training engineers as fast as they can.
So what still needs to be done in the UK? Talking to senior engineers at the recent MACH show and in interviews recently, a similar message seems to be coming across. Children have always been keen on the idea of engineering; and over the past decade, parents have come around to the idea that the sector represents a good place for their children to seek employment. The siren call of the City and the world of finance has lost much of its brazen lustre over the last few years. The people that still need to be convinced are the teachers.
It seems that when it comes to advice about careers and how school subjects relate to them, teachers are poorly prepared to guide students into engineering. Frequently we’re told that teachers don’t appreciate what a career in engineering might need; that they don’t understand what engineers do; and they aren’t convinced it’s a worthwhile career choice.
Of course, teachers have enough on their plates with teaching to have to worry overmuch about careers advice. But the answer seems to be fairly obvious: engineering companies have to make more of an attempt to connect with schools. All sorts of possibilities spring to mind, from helping to design curriculums, getting involved with training careers advisors, and sponsoring schools visits. Of course, many companies already get involved in this sort of event, but it needs to become a regular part of every major company and institution’s annual routine, whichever sector they’re involved in and whatever projects they’re currently working on.
Britain has no shortage of interesting, exciting engineering sectors that can attract people’s attention. You can work on racing cars in the most glamorous sport in the world. You can go out of this world, building satellites and space probes. You can build graceful bridges and soaring skyscrapers. You can work around the world. It’s not difficult to make engineering exciting. What’s a bit more challenging is to embed it into the everyday and make sure that tomorrow’s students and educators understand how what they learn day to day relates to the world around them.
It’s the most difficult job in the world, they say. But engineers are used to difficult jobs. Let’s help build people.
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Readers' comments (28)
Ian H.Thain | 9 May 2012 4:24 pm
I have pondered this on and off this afternoon, and others have made most of the points that occurred to me. There is just one left:-
Fifty years ago I did "A" levels in Physics, Chemistry, Pure Maths and Applied Maths. There was no "A" level Engineering, and I became an engineer almost by mistake. There was no clearly defined academic route from "O" level onwards.
Step One therefore is to see to it that exam boards set quite difficult "A" level papers in Engineering, such that only the brightest can pass them.
Market forces should then take care of some of the remaining points made above, though some formal and legal prohibition of the use of "Engineer" by the mass media is also needful, as for example, a person cannot be described as a Doctor if he isn't one. "Technician" is the appropriate term for the person who fixes your washing machine.
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Anonymous | 9 May 2012 4:27 pm
2 Reasons mainly.
The first is the Agencies, they drive down wages and put forward people with high degree level passes for jobs that takes skill as well as brain power, to companies that have come to associate a first or higher as being the bottom line acceptance.
Second would be the companies that have the belief that Engineers are disposable and can be got rid of at a moments notice in recessionary times, because they already pay them too much. Bottom line is anyone that highly paid and is not in management is surplus to requirements.
Why would anyone want to either enter or stop in an industry that has these imposed conditions, when they can go and get a highly paid job elsewhere.
I would say the education needs to start at employer level, the trouble with that is that we now have these agency employed retards in the higher levels, that could not spot a skilled person if they tried.
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Chris Lee | 9 May 2012 4:33 pm
Engineers need to be more proactive in spreading the word within schools and within teacher training establishments, thereby exciting them to participate?
People have a concept of what a doctor or accountant does, but the engineer title is so demeaned by any person tinkering with or maintaining equipment that it is not recognised as a profession.
The term 'engineer' MUST be restricted by professional legislation to those who are professional. Other professions do it, why not engineers?
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Oliver Dunthorne | 9 May 2012 5:07 pm
We do have an image problem. Did anyone see the daily telegraph yesterday (Tuesday) where British Gas had a full page and a 1/2 saying get our engineers or something similar. You won't get an engineer out from BG you might get a technician and most likely a craftsman. When are the Institutions going to do something about the misuse of the term 'Engineer'. I'm about to ask the Institution of gas Engineers that question.
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Anonymous | 9 May 2012 10:32 pm
The idea of protecting the title of engineer is a perennial. I'm not sure whether it would help – I'll ask a farrier if I get the chance. As far as I know, there's no such protection of title for people in the financial sector but it hasn't stopped some of them from being high earners in sought-after positions.
I notice some of us are reacting to British sniffiness about engineering by being sniffy about tradespeople – try doing their job and report back.
Job adverts for engineers that I come across typically demand a very particular set of skills, acquired at no expense to the recruiter, in return for a less than stratospheric salary. Presumably, it's these recruiters who bleat about a skills shortage.
We'll know that the lamented skills shortage is real when engineers at the top of their profession are living in posh areas next door to people in the legal, medical and financial sectors, which strangely, seem to have no problem drawing bright youngsters. Have you seen lawyers, doctors and bankers in schools waxing lyrical about their wonderful careers? Maybe so, maybe not.
By the way, it's the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers. Lowly tradespeople working with gas have to be registered, have their work inspected every few years, and have to re-qualify every five years. Perhaps that should be introduced for the lofty professions?
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Anonymous | 9 May 2012 10:51 pm
Some really terrible ideas here. Taking action to protect the term engineer is elitist (looks very negative to everyone else) and even if it succeeds will not alter the public perception that engineering involves installing, maintaining and repairing stuff. Non-engineers will still call technicians engineers. That won't stop because of some distant piece of legislation that will receive scant coverage in mainstream press and the vast majority of people will never hear about.
On to the old chestnut that Germany has a better perception of its engineers: this is because Germany actually designs, makes and exports a high volume of a wide range of things rather than chiefly install, maintain and repair them. The perception is different because the reality is different.
I agree with the other commentator that engineering suffers with sign-ups because it isn't a defined subject at school - like biology, geography or history etc. If it can't be created as a subject that stands alone (and I'm guessing the fact that it's a convergence of all the sciences plus maths would deter schools from teaching it alone) then we need to better inform teachers and careers advisors what engineering is and where it can take you and put them in a position to highlight children with strong results in sciences and maths gcses that they have the right ingredients to become engineers and point them in the direction of useful exciting resources on what a varied and fulfilling (and well paid and well travelled) career engineering offers and what a-levels they need to proceed.
Stop trying to turn back the tide, accept where we are and lets all do our bit to help inform the next generation of engineers and importantly their teachers and career advisors.
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Dan Yates | 10 May 2012 8:23 am
The worry over the future shortage of Engineers, as the average age increases has been answered very neatly by the government and the pension companies. They have made it inevitable that the likes of Engineers of my age, (47), will still be toiling away at age 80+ being unable to retire, allowing plenty of time for the new recruits to enter the system.
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Craig Watkinson | 10 May 2012 8:59 am
When I was growing up I was surrounded by engineering, local mining activities and in my circle of friends at least 1 in 4 were engineers. At school I was taught metal work, wood work and technology subjects by those who had experiance. With the great decline in the manufacturing centres in the UK there are less and less engineers in society with whom children can relate. Several people have said that teachers lack "industrial" experience and this may be a small contributing factor, but children have less contact with engineering outside school. With fewer parents being from technical careers and less ability play "technically" building swings etc, I feel this is a greater influence on their career choices. Getting more seasoned engineers into schools is one option, but I have to ask if I would place myself into a position of being in a school with the current levels of dicipline and ability for teachers to "teach". The simple answer is no. There are no quick fixes to this in my 40+ years the decline has been a steady one and history shows decline is always faster than rise. On the plus side my 2 year old daughter loves to "fix" things, has her own toolbox and can already comprehend bolts, batteries and simple block building. If all engineers were able to take at least one "protégé" under their wing the decline in our numbers may be slowed.
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Dr David Hill | 10 May 2012 12:13 pm
Nick Clegg just does not realise why his manufacturing plan will never work - Whitehall is in the way
Nick Clegg’s call for government to give priority to manufacturing is a laudable and an honourable task (9.05.12). But unfortunately it will not work. The reason, government and especially ‘Whitehall’ do not listen to anyone else but themselves. In the Blair years I together with forty of the world’s leading minds that included eight Nobel Laureates advised the DTI on competitiveness, innovation (the most important commodity that we have as a country) and the founding of the NESTA. This worldwide eminent group advised in 1997 and 1998 that the UK should adopt an economic strategy based upon ‘high-tech export driven manufacturing’. Exactly I believe what Mr. Clegg is saying today, but 15 years later. Therefore I can tell Mr. Clegg from this experience that senior civil servants do not listen and just do as they wish to do; just another exercise to them but the future ramifications for the people of the UK is immense. The problem, as it will be today, is that the so-called ‘twenty something wiz-kids’ in Whitehall had not a clue up to assistant director level. They were supposingly the best from Oxford and Cambridge but what they lacked most of all was business experience and the ways of the world. Only theory came out of their heads, for that is all that they had to offer. You may ask why are these assistant directors so important? The answer is that they are the highest level ‘doers’ in Whitehall and it is their analysis and reports that ministers base their decisions ultimately upon. What did the Nobel Laureates and the other leading minds make of all this, they simply said at the end of the two years that they had been simply wasting their time, even after attempting to educate the uneducated. Therefore my advice to Mr. Clegg is to get real advisers advising government and not the Whitehall elite who think that they know best but clearly the last decade and a half has proved that they do not. Only then may he get somewhere, but if he keeps the status quo in Whitehall, it will lead him and thus the country to nowhere and probable ruin again in the long term. Our young deserve a great deal better, for these unseen senior civil servants are constantly dabbling with their futures and where they will no doubt get it so terribly wrong again. Therefore I say to Mr. Clegg, use your intelligence for a change and sort out Whitehall, for that is where a great deal of the nation’s dire problems emanate in reality. Whitehall needs ‘new blood’ like nothing else as it is our future that they will in many ways determine through government economic and business policy.
Dr David Hill
Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation
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Engineering lecturer | 13 May 2012 8:56 pm
The problem is not perception - it's the reality that is the problem.
Start paying engineers (and engineering lecturers/teachers) high wages and the alleged shortage will cease very quickly.
No need for a public enquiry, research investigation, consultation or think tank - just some common sense - and it is in very short supply in the UK.
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