Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL 2008
MISS RACHAEL
MENSAH, MISS
SHORNA-KAY
REID, MR
OYENUGA ABIOYE,
MR LE'VAL
HAUGHTON-JAMES,
MR JOSH
SIMPSON, MR
DAVID LAKIN
AND MR
CHRIS MARTIN
Q20 Chairman: £100,000?
Mr Haughton-James: But with engineering
you do not stay at £30,000 a year; you can go up depending
on your qualifications. I know, personally, that if I wanted to
earn more money I would train harder.
Q21 Dr Gibson: Do you know anyone
who has started doing engineering, got fed up with it and did
something else, not necessarily finance. Have you met anybody
like that?
Mr Haughton-James: I have not
actually met anyone in person, but I have heard stories about
it. I can understand the reasons why they would drop out of engineering
because it is not an easy job, but if you have, not to say the
talent, but the desire to do it, then it is easy and fulfilling.
Q22 Ian Stewart: David, did you do
a five-year apprenticeship?
Mr Lakin: I did, yes.
Q23 Ian Stewart: Good. So why did
you leave engineering?
Mr Lakin: First of all, I thoroughly
enjoyed my position at Caterpillar as product engineer, it was
very rewarding. One day we had an open house for a local school
and we took them round and showed them different parts of the
company and what our position was, etc. The perception from the
beginning of the day to the end of the day was completely different.
At the beginning of the day it was very much, "Oh, I don't
know why we're here, this is boring and smelly", to the end
of the day being, "Oh, I didn't realise that engineers did
that; I didn't realise that was a type of engineering".
Q24 Ian Stewart: What would have
persuaded you to continue to follow a professional career in engineering?
Mr Lakin: Nothing, because I would
still go back into that. I stepped out of engineering to do this
because of a personal buzz of changing people's perception and
encouraging them to go into engineering, but I would step back
into engineering, back into production, because I have a passion
for engineering and I do love it.
Q25 Chairman: Josh, very quickly,
who is your engineering hero?
Mr Simpson: I am not sure. I think
that is one of the problems with engineering; you do not hear
about engineering in the media, so it is difficult for young people
to relate to a particular person.
Q26 Chairman: Does anybody else have
a hero?
Mr Martin: Someone like Brunel,
but obviously that is very easy. It was a long time ago and is
my next point; it was the Victorian era and is ancient.
Q27 Chairman: We regard Dr Ian Gibson
as our hero. You are all looking blank now; is there a 21st century
engineering hero?
Mr Lakin: Touching on what Josh
has said that everyone has heroes like people who have developed
transport and motor sport racing, and so on, but you do not know
the names of the engineers because they are not celebrated.
Q28 Mr Boswell: Is the teamwork important
in this? I have to admit to Josh that I am MP for Silverstone,
among other things, and am fairly close to the F1 industry. There,
you may have a technical director but you do not necessarily have
one engineer who is going to design your F1 car. Is the counterpart
to the fact that you do not have heroes that you, on the whole,
are quite happy to work in teams to produce something?
Mr Lakin: I think so, yes. It
is very rare that you have one engineer who does everything to
create and come up with the initial design or idea, but then it
is a team of engineers that takes it forward, so it is very hard
to have one single person. To rephrase the question, the heroes
would be, say, the Ferrari racing team or something like that.
Q29 Chairman: If I asked you who
Norman Haste was, would you be able to tell me, Abi?
Mr Abioye: No.
Chairman: Never heard of him? Right.
He is sitting behind you!
Q30 Dr Turner: In Germany, things
are very different. There, engineers enjoy the same social status
as doctors, lawyers and other professions. It is sadly not the
case in Britain, except for those who are wise enough to see it.
The exposure that kids get at school is obviously playing a part
in this. I would like to have a sample of your experience of what
impression you got of engineering that was attributable to the
school; something that could perhaps make up for the fact that
there are no glamorous TV series starring Amanda Burton advertising
your subject. Engineering does not have any of that, there are
no sexy soaps about engineers. What are your experiences as far
as the school is concerned in providing an impression of engineering
as a career? Perhaps we can start with you, Josh.
Mr Simpson: That is a very good
point because you obviously have maths and science at school and
technology and they never really come together to form engineering
at school. At my school, we took part in a formal schools challenge
and I think three students out of our year did that, so that was
not a widespread thing. One of my friends who is also doing maths
and physics at A-level. I said to him, "Why don't you go
into engineering?" And he said, "Yes, but I don't like
engines". You laugh at that, but it shows how much it is
not expressed in schools what engineering is.
Q31 Dr Turner: But why should that
be problem? At school, if someone is going to be a doctor, they
do not study medicine at school, they study the appropriate A-levels—biology,
physics and chemistry—that prepare them for a medical course;
they do not do medicine, they just know it is there. So, why do
you think this is not true of engineering? What about the other
people who are still in school, Rachael and Shorna-Kay, what is
your view? What does your school tell you about engineering?
Miss Mensah: It is not the whole
school. I was introduced to engineering by my technology teacher.
He said he was going to start an engineering club and if I was
interested I could come along. So, I went along and he started
with little projects such as building a bridge, building a buggy
racing car. That is when the school decided that they were going
to go on the London Engineering trip to the Tower of London for
a trebuchet competition, so the whole of Year 9 went. That was
when engineers club really took off because that is when my friends
began to realise what engineering was about when they went to
that.
Q32 Dr Turner: So your school made
an effort to promote engineering but how general is this in the
school experience of all of you?
Mr Martin: Not very. I am talking
about 15 years ago when I was going through school and choosing
degrees and A-levels but I certainly was not made aware of engineering
as a careers option. Going back to the points that the other members
of the panel have raised already, that sciences are taught by
science teachers who have done science degrees, there is no one
who has actually done engineering because they are all working
in practice. So students are not made aware that this whole career
is out there.
Q33 Dr Turner: So we have a real
problem at the school level?
Mr Lakin: From what I can tell
working with a number of schools through the London Engineering
Project—we work with 15 secondary and 25 primary schools—is
that if you have a member of staff at the school, nine times out
of ten, a technology teacher or a head of science, they are interested
in engineering and are willing to give up their time to set up
an engineering club or take the kids out on visits to be involved
in something like the London Engineering Project and to get involved
in competitions and challenges. That is where the students then
see engineering and that is where they get involved. Take Josh,
for example; his teacher entered him into the Young Engineer for
Britain competition where he was a regional winner and then came
on to the national final. As the girls mentioned, they have a
young engineers club in the school that was set up by their teacher.
The school, on the whole, will not do much but if there is an
individual in the school who is willing to do things, then that
is where the kids see it. Unfortunately, the teachers do not get
rewarded for that, they have to give up their own time and stay
after school to run these clubs and they do not normally get incentives
to do that, so it is a personal thing.
Q34 Dr Turner: Can you see a way
through that?
Mr Lakin: Personally, I would
like to see the schools offering incentives for teachers to do
things like that and more dedication for them to have a club that
it is a must rather than just an option, and to go on more trips
and take part in more competitions and challenges.
Q35 Dr Turner: I would like to ask
all of you what your feelings are about the best academic preparation
for an engineering course. Did you all, for instance, do double
or triple science GCSEs? Did you do design and technology or computing?
How relevant do you think these were (a) to switching on your
interest in engineering and (b) what do you think of them as a
preparation for a career in engineering?
Mr Haughton-James: At GSCE level,
I did double science and IT, but I dropped technology because
I was not interested in it in school, but it gives you that introduction
to the skill which you can take on and then expand further. In
school, they do not relate it to engineering so you do not realise
you are doing engineering until you hear about it from somewhere
else.
Q36 Dr Turner: There is going to
be a new course introduced into schools later this year—a
diploma in engineering. How useful do you think this is going
to be? It is a foundation diploma, from 14-16; it can go to a
higher diploma, up to 18. Do you think this is a good preparation,
for instance, if you were going to go on to an engineering degree?
I am not an engineer, but I know many engineers and I know that
they start with a solid background in physics and maths as the
absolute academic foundation of engineering. Do you think a diploma
could possibly weaken the academic foundation, but that may be
countered by engendering greater interest, so that in the end
the benefits of generating greater interest might outweigh the
weakening of the academic foundation?
Mr Lakin: I am involved in the
Engineering diploma with the Royal Academy of Engineering so I
know what it is all about. My view is that it is an excellent
qualification. Beginning at 14, the standard in which they are
going to learn is extremely good. If they complete the three-year
course with a diploma, that diploma will be more than good enough
to walk straight into employment or to then go on to university.
I understand what you are saying about the background of maths
and physics and so on; this is teaching them the same but more
relating to engineering with more hands-on to give them a much
better understanding of engineering so that when they leave school
and go into employment, it is not a million miles away.
Q37 Dr Turner: So you have high expectations
of this diploma?
Mr Lakin: I do, yes.
Q38 Dr Turner: Since you are involved
with it, how widely is it going to be rolled out in schools?
Mr Lakin: It is going to be launched
as a pilot for the first two years, starting in September, hopefully
to iron out all the problems, to then go national. The interest
is there because it is not a million miles away from an NVQ style
of qualification, where it is more hands-on. The children that
are keen to make and design things, to be hands-on, but do not
necessarily like the more academic side of education; it is the
perfect qualification for them.
Q39 Dr Turner: Do you think that
the academic high-flyers in schools will be attracted by this
qualification?
Mr Lakin: Yes, I do. It is open
to all. With the academic high-flyers, you normally find that
they excel; they go on to A-levels, university and then when they
leave university, go straight into employment and they are as
green as grass because they do not have the hands-on experience.
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