Can't get the staff
With a severe skills
shortage that shows no signs of slowing and an aging workforce, much time and
column inches have been devoted to finding a solution. According to some
engineers, part of the solution lies not at university or even at A-Level, but
at GCSE with the nation’s Design Technology students. Angela Ringguth, Professional Development Consultant to CIBSE, writes
on the need for good quality design teachers.
The fear that there is a skills crisis in the Engineering
sector is nothing new; newspapers and magazines of all stripes, from trade
papers to the nationals, regularly feature articles bemoaning the lack of
qualified graduates. And they’re right to be concerned, because we are entering
what promises to be a golden age of Engineering as budgets increase,
construction booms and ever more stringent climate change targets require
inventive solutions to meet.
UK engineers are in demand around the world for their
abilities across all sectors, but we risk missing out on this renaissance if
there is no talent pipeline in place to keep up with demand.
There is obviously no easy solution to such a long-running
problem, and most of the efforts seem to be aimed at capturing school-leavers
choosing their University courses, or skilled graduates with one eye on a
lucrative City pay packet. Solutions proposed include free tuition for
in-demand STEM courses, double
pay for new engineers and a raft of new alternative qualifications and
apprenticeships to entice the less academic.
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| New multi-billion pound developments include the revamped Battersea Power Station |
However, a growing movement believes that part of the
solution lies much earlier in a young person’s education. Currently, the shortage
of 2,000 Design and Technology (D&T) teachers means that two out of three
schools will not have adequate provision by next year. This is a serious
problem for the engineering sector, because D&T lessons provide the
necessary focus on practical, hands-on skills that set children out on an
engineering path.
The bread and butter of an engineer’s education remains the
hard sciences and maths, continued from primary all the way through to A-level,
and D&T has been seen as the poor relation to these by parents and teachers
advising pupils on their options. However, this attitude is an unfortunate
misunderstanding of the ability that design teachers have to instil a spark in
a child’s mind that can be carried forward into a fully-fledged career.
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| Children try out the friction plate at an Imagineering event |
Putting complex ideas to practical use is a rare opportunity
for young pupils, and D&T allows them to discover the huge number of
practical connections to allied professions that engineers must also consider;
from design, to business, to the arts – there are engineering puzzles to be
solved in every field. D&T marries the technical with the practical, a
skillset often lacking in newly minted graduates, and provides a pathway to an
apprenticeship for those seeking an alternative route.
In order to ensure that D&T doesn’t fall by the wayside,
and close an invaluable gateway to engineering, it is important that the
subject is taken more seriously in schools. Recognising the training and hiring
of new D&T teachers as an important priority is a place to start, that is
why CIBSE supports the Designed and Made in Britain…? Campaign at www.data.org.uk.
This won’t solve the recruitment crisis in a stroke, but it
will help instil a respect and appreciation for engineering throughout the
education system, and allow kids to experience its joys.
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