Following an independent review of technical education in the UK, the government has today unveiled ground-breaking plans to create new post-GCSE options aimed at encouraging more young people to consider a career in engineering.
Based based on recommendations made by a panel led by Lord Sainsbury, the proposed reforms have been hailed by the Royal Academy of Engineering as the most significant transformation of post-16 education since A levels were introduced 70 years ago.
Lord Sainsbury’s review found that young people considering a technical education today must choose between more than 20,000 courses provided by 160 different organisations. A young person wanting to pursue an engineering career faces a choice of 501 different courses.
The review recommends simplifying the current system so that technical education is provided through 15 routes, with standards set by industry professionals. Several of these routes would provide skilled recruits for the engineering profession, including engineering and manufacturing, digital, transport and logistics, and construction.
Acting on the review’s recommendations the government has today published a Post-16 Skills plan that pledges to implement all of the Sainsbury panel’s proposals where budgets allow.
The plan will enable students to choose whether to take technical or academic qualifications after their GCSEs. Those opting for a technical route will be able to choose between a two-year college course – with standards and content led by employers – or an apprenticeship.
Both the findings of the report and the government’s response have been welcomed across industry. Calling on industry and education to work together to implement the report’s recommendations Tim Thomas, Director of Employment and Skills Policy at EEF said: “The report rightly highlights the need for technical education to meet the needs of employers. Manufacturers want a skills system that is as responsive to their needs as they are to their customers, yet this has failed to be delivered to date. The current system is overcrowded with qualifications, many of which remain unused.”
Meanwhile, Engineering UK Chief Executive, Paul Jackson said the proposed introduction of a ‘transition year’ to give young people the opportunity to focus on bringing their skills in key areas up to the required standard is particularly welcome, and called for government funding to support a wider scale initiative along these lines.
Professor Dame Ann Dowling, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering commented: we stand ready to support government in identifying the necessary knowledge, practical skills and behaviours required across the engineering, construction and IT sectors to inform the new technical education landscape.”
According to the government the first of the new technical education routes will be made available from September 2019 and all routes will have been introduced by September 2022.
Lack of industry knowledge and experience was flagged as priority concern in The Engineer’s 2016 salary, with 51.2% of respondents claiming that it was the biggest issue affecting industry.
The desire to pursue a technical career starts long before gcse. The number of courses is largely irrelevant. The price for each course and how far it will get you will be relevant again. Just have seen a nice animation about a futuristic international deep sea rescue, with very technical details of the deep sea rescue craft. THAT’s what starts interest in young people.
Ralph, you’re right on the on the “money”
A very welcome initiative, but we need to understand that the full benefits will take more than a generation to bear fruit. This is because the best engineers – or any other technically adept people for that matter – are created in early childhood, usually by parental enthusiasm for the subject and results in a student who regards the required learning as a fulfilment rather than a mere means to a career. There also appears to be a lack of technically competent teachers, which hopefully this initiative will further address. There are plenty of good minds out there – they just need showing the way forwards!
My own electronic engineering career followed all your points. At the age of 8 wiring up battery and lights via domestic old fuse switches all around the lawn. Then sucking dry all the information from the Physics teacher, at a Technical School, (1961-1966) in obtaining my GCE in Physics, then joining The Marconi Company in Chelmsford on a Technician’s 3 year apprenticeship followed by numerous post graduate studies.
Alas so sadly all for nought with the UK electronics industry collapsing. Has anyone tried to source a UK manufactured resistor, lately?
Agreed but one of the problems now is that everything is instant. When I started at 8 or so there were all kinds of bits and pieces around to experiment with, lots of it ex WD, so it was easy to make crystal sets, light boxes and so on. It was an analogue world.
Nowadays it is a digital world and the building blocks much more complex. Of course kits can be bought for creating circuits but this is too instructional rather than the experimentation I enjoyed so much and in a self taught situation.
Still a great step forward to provide the practical engineering skills – hopefully- destroyed when the old Tech’s and Secondary Schools became ‘modernised’!
No chance. Most want to be sports personalities, be involved in the performing arts or self-employed at home. Hedonism and materialism rules in the UK today.
I understand where you’re coming from Brian, and it’s hardly surprising given the high degree of media coverage given to sports and the arts. However, perhaps the presence of people like Brian Cox, Jim Al-Khalili, Lucie Green, and Helen Czerski (et al.) gracing our TV screens might start to give the sciences and engineering a bit more media presence. After all, children can hardly be expected to be interested in something they’ve never heard of.
I’m a firm believer in ‘get ’em whilst their young’; to which end you only need to look at the interest generated by projects like the Bloodhound SSC and their involvement in schools. It’s this practical hand-on approach that turns children on to science & engineering; and, given the shortage of teachers with scientific or engineering skills, it’s going to be up to industry to push for access into the schools, not wait for the schools to get interested.
Perhaps we all tend to believe what we ‘know’ and ourselves experienced represents the ‘best’ route of learning for those we seek to advise. Though now that ‘they’ -with hardly an O level in a STEM subject between them- have committed to a new future for ‘us’ technologists (but did you notice the ‘budget’ caveat in HMGs proposals) may we repay the compliment by commenting in the manner in which ‘they’ were educated: which was and is obviously flawed. Just think about how and what they have done in the past few weeks alone? Intellectual pigmies would be a mild comment?
Hmmm, well let’s hope it works, but how does this fit in with Technology Colleges taking students at age 14…?
If some are worried (rightly in my view) that children need to be attracted at an earlier age, teachers need to get more in-tune with local industry. Anyone remember ‘neighbourhood engineers’…? 20 years ago I volunteered for this but gave up after a few years because the amount of effort to get schools interested was huge: even offering them money (indirectly of course) from the large company (and therefore local employer) where I was employed didn’t work.
In the meantime, children are subconsciously subjected to mis-information about what an engineer does because the media still don’t accurately portray the various levels in the profession, and children believe that an engineer spends his time fixing washing machines or photocopiers, not designing them in the first place.
Perhaps we all believe that what ‘we’ experienced in our route to our profession is what we should recommend should apply to others following. my thinking, there is something ridiculous about a group of politicians (aided by yet another independent report-from Finniston in the ’70s to 2016!) now believing ‘they’ have the answer. I would like to propose that The Engineer now reverses the situation: and offers, via its readers, a new training and education scenario for those who purport to be the G&G and our betters. So that they can operate within the present technology ‘driven’ world where the rest of us (and the wider world of commerce) live. Based upon their performance over the past few weeks, they would not even be able to the GCSE level .
AT LAST, a ray of common sense. My career started before GCE ( as was) with ‘metal work, wood work, physics and chemistry. The result was a wonderful life in Electrical Engineering. I agree with Ralph comments discovery of your innate skills starts before GCSE – Primary School is the place to start. I have had the pleasure of working in other European Countries and seen primary school children working on car engines specially donated by manufactures – No high torque fixings, power tools that could be easily dismantled etc. The report is one BIG step in the right direction. Now implement it.
I have now read in detail the full Sainsbury Report: like the curate’s egg it is ‘good in parts’. I am reminded of one of Tom Woolf’s (Porterhouse Blue etc) early books: written to describe his time as a lecturer in a technical college: he describes teaching, as part of their education as well as their technical training…. Shakespeare to “Gas Fitters III” . Just remind me: which lunatic destroyed what was probably the best and most rounded ‘technical education scenario’ in the world: which our nation enjoyed above all its competitors. Clue: female and daughter of a shop-keeper. I must also flag CP Snow (an education guru of the 50s/60s, and the then Rector of a well known Scottish University -and his innovative view that the two cultures -Arts and sciences: to be of equal merit and complimentry. Education or Training? when both -see above!
Whatever we do, can we ensure that anyone ‘tainted’ by our present and totally discredited system of education (in this and most areas) is removed completely from any post, position or power which might allow them to influence the future. I have opined before (as have others) that sadly, the majority of present ‘institutions’ that ‘rule/run our nation are completely unfit for purpose. Read my posts, particularly those who garner the most criticism, to see what I mean!
Most parents are too ready to put an electronic device in the hands of their youngsters, rather than my generation where we had Meccano, Lego and later Sticklebricks. All were to lead us to have an interest in how to make things and see how they work, and then move onto repairing our own cycle and first jalopy of a vehicle that we could afford in our late teens. But what have we now to stimulate the early interest which was the building block (pardon the pun) of our later careers. Also there were some notable TV science programmes and inspirational events like the Moon Shots, Concorde, and military aircraft like the Harrier which are not happening much today.