Turbulence ahead without proper skills

As HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports, the Education for Engineering (E4E) initiative has identified six immediate “policy priorities” it says the Coalition Government must embrace to safeguard UK engineering’s future, increase interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, raise the UK engineering profession’s profile, and highlight skilled engineers’ contribution to society.

Discussing with me how the Education for Engineering initiative officially got off the ground in September 2009, Dr Rhys Morgan, E4E head of secretariat, explained that it was largely in response to sector-wide concerns about a current lack of sufficient skilling to ensure the future prosperity of UK engineering, a lack of adequate STEM teaching resources, and because it was felt that engineers’ contribution to society had been significantly underestimated in recent years. At a meeting at the London offices of the Royal Academy of Engineering (which is “hosting” E4E), Dr Morgan told me: “Concerns about both a lack of adequate engineering skills for the future, and a drop in the number of people wanting to teach physics and mathematics, have been issues for some years. However the July 2002 report, ‘SET for Success’, authored by Sir Gareth Roberts, which examined the apparent imbalance between supply and demand of high quality scientists and engineers as a key element of the UK’s future R&D and innovation performance, really emphasised the problem’s magnitude. The report simply highlighted the ongoing concerns of the many people keen to see UK engineering continue to prosper that, without better co-ordinated recruitment, training, and retention, of qualified, skilled STEM subject teachers, and an engineering workforce sufficiently skilled and adaptable for a fast-changing industrial and commercial landscape, UK engineering could be set for turbulent times.”

Investigating the shortage