Engineering Skills: Design and Technology Education

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered engineering skills and design and technology education.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I have called this debate because I believe that the future of engineering and design and technology education is central to the challenges facing our economy today. An under-skilled workforce limits a company’s—and, in turn, the country’s—growth prospects. If our labour supply does not match our jobs market, the result is simple: companies will either relocate or, potentially, close. That is a massive threat facing businesses in my constituency and our country.

We must be bold. We cannot just tinker around the edges and hope for the best—not if we want to fulfil the infamous long-term economic plan, support British businesses, boost productivity and give young people a fair shot in life by encouraging them to study subjects that are more likely to lead to employment. The UK is the 11th biggest manufacturer in the world. We are competitive in our ability to research and develop highly specialised technologies. However, to maintain our influence, we must focus on exports and address the UK’s productivity crisis. Since 2013, the UK’s productivity has been stagnating. That is simply unacceptable and needs addressing.

We have a severe shortage of engineers. According to the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the country will need almost 2 million more engineers in the next seven years. I repeat: 2 million. That is a flabbergasting figure. Each week, I visit businesses in my constituency, and time and again the same message is echoed: they are struggling to hire adequately skilled staff. Shockingly, some businesses are considering the possibility of relocating. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills estimates that companies are struggling to fill 43% of their STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—vacancies because of the skills gap.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing a debate about such an important topic. Does she agree that it is not just the commercial sector that is affected? The shortage of skills in the wider economy also has an impact on our military, who train people in STEM subjects; the Royal Navy has one engineer for every two it would like in some sectors, because of private sector companies desperately trying to recruit people with the skills in which it provides training.

[Michelle Donelan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent point. The shortage of STEM skills is vast across a number of sectors, and we need to face that. In the military, the private sector and the public sector, it is a big problem facing us. Also on that point, there is a problem with the numbers of females and of people from socially deprived backgrounds in STEM. We must try to make the industry much more representative. The number of women in engineering is just 6%. Something needs to be done to address that.

A business in my constituency, Alford Technologies, summed the situation up well in an email to me. It said:

“Engineering is sadly underrated in the UK. Britain needs to do something to raise the profile of engineering, to make it something more people aspire to do. In order to stay at the forefront of the modern, technological world, the Government really needs to invest in encouraging the next generation of great engineers, designers and innovators.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) on securing this important debate. It has been informative, with many valuable contributions, and there are clear messages coming through. The hon. Lady talked about the need to tailor the curriculum to what business requires and, when looking at school curricula, it is important to consider what we are trying to achieve as the end product.

As a physics teacher, I have been long aware of the growing need for specific professions within the workplace. Engineers, scientists and computer scientists have become key to economic success in this ever more digital world. There is a massive skills gap, and we should be taking positive steps to address it. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about retaining the teachers we have and encouraging more people to take up a career in STEM teaching, and I agree; teachers are key to everything we are discussing this morning. If we cannot get teachers in, how can we possibly encourage our young people to take up these subjects? It is also important that we have an environment that is conducive to people moving into teaching. We need to look at what is happening in schools and the stresses and strains that have been put on teachers.

The hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan) talked about working together to produce the best results, and that is important. We want a situation where our young people educated in engineering and science can travel not only throughout the UK but throughout the world. We are producing top-class engineers, but we are just not producing enough of them. We should be able to export these young people worldwide. He also mentioned grammar schools. I taught in a comprehensive school for most of my career, and I do not believe that grammar schools solve all the problems.

Schoolchildren’s awareness of careers in industry has been mentioned, and we need to be careful about some of the language we use. We talk about industry, but for many children that word conjures up images of boiler suits, oil and probably fairly manky toilet facilities. If we are trying to encourage our young people, we need to be careful when we loosely talk about the engineer coming round to fix our central heating boiler or our satellite TV. Important though those workers are, I am pretty sure that most of them do not have a degree in engineering.

[Kevin Foster]

The hon. Lady is making an interesting and at some points amusing speech. Does she agree that part of the issue is that we perceive engineering in this country as someone fixing a washing machine? In other parts of Europe, “engineer” is a title in itself, almost like having a knighthood.

[Carol Monaghan]

Absolutely. We of course have chartered engineer status, but that does not filter through to children when they are thinking about careers. The stereotypes are damaging. The hon. Member for Strangford talked about the high-end jobs we have in the UK, but how do we raise awareness? A few weeks ago, I visited Clyde Space, an engineering and manufacturing plant in an office block in the centre of Glasgow that manufacturers satellites. It has a lovely open-plan area with computers down one side. Lots of young people were sitting at them, chatting and working away. They were in jeans and some even had make-up on. It is a relaxed, nice environment, and they are all engineers. We need to change our perception of what an engineer is.

The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) talked about raising awareness of STEM careers at a much earlier age, and that is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) talked about the STEM outreach in his local area. Things like that start getting children ready for other possible careers.

The hon. Member for Chippenham mentioned the subjects included in the EBacc, but what is the purpose of the EBacc? Is it an attempt at producing a gold-standard qualification, or is it simply for league tables? I spoke to the Minister for Schools last week about the composition of the EBacc—we are becoming great friends across the Chamber—and I talked about the science pillar, which retains the traditional subjects. Although the rhetoric about STEM is positive, such things as the composition of the EBacc should be driven by economic factors, not just by outdated views of what a gold-standard education should be. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) talked about the importance of hands-on skills, problem solving and apprenticeships. Those are vital. Problem-solving skills developed at school can be used widely in society, and not just within an engineering situation.

The Scottish picture was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun. In response to him, I should say that my son is just about to embark on an engineering degree at university, so perhaps I was more persuasive. In Scotland, we have redesigned our curriculum not by making a list of the subjects we consider to be core but instead by starting at the end point: looking at what employers need and the skills our young people have to have. Our new curriculum requires children to study a broad general curriculum from age three. It must cover lots of curricular areas, including expressive arts, health and wellbeing, languages, maths, religious education, sciences, social studies and technologies. All those subjects must be covered to age 14, so children in Scotland are getting the exposure that many Members have talked about today. As young people approach their exams, they can choose which strands they wish to progress. Within the technologies curriculum, there are many different subjects—computing science, design and manufacture, design and technology, engineering and science, to name but a few—that allow them to specialise. The beauty of it is that all subject areas have equal status and the markers by which schools are judged encompass all curricular areas.

As our young people progress, they have far wider options in which they can choose to specialise. The hon. Member for South Antrim talked about his difficulties with some of those areas. Not everyone is born to be an engineer, but not everyone is born to be an expert in classics, either. Variety is what makes our society rich. We have a baccalaureate in Scotland, but it happens at a later stage. Students can do four different baccalaureates: languages; expressive arts; social sciences; and science, which includes design and manufacture and engineering science. Those qualifications at a late stage in secondary are meant to be cross-curricular and include a cross-curricular project.

In conclusion, I totally agree with the hon. Member for Chippenham and the point she raised about the importance of design and technology qualifications. We need to look at a curriculum that is driven by what industry requires, not by what politicians think is needed. We also need curricula that allow for personalisation and choice, so that young people can become experts in their areas of interest.