Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60 - 78)
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
Q60 Dr Gibson: You should be an MP.
Mr Simpson: That way, all you
have to explain is that you want to be an engineer and if they
ask what you mean, then you have to explain, well, in Formula
One teams I want to make cars, I want to make planes; you have
to narrow it down because "engineer" is quite a broad
term and covers many things.
Q61 Dr Gibson: So that is what happened.
Are people still asking you that question?
Mr Simpson: Yes.
Q62 Dr Gibson: Let us go along the
line. What do you say when you are asked that question?
Mr Haughton-James: I used to say
I wanted to be a footballer; everybody has that dream at my age
from my area and then as I grew up I realised that it was not
going to happen. I came close, but it just did not happen in the
end. I only really found an interest in engineering when I started
working and I starting saying that I am interested in creation
and design but I am not sure if I will do engineering—but
now obviously I am. So I would say engineering, if anyone asked
me and they would just say, oh well, there is a lot of money in
that and I would say that there could be but it depends what field
I go into.
Q63 Dr Gibson: Do you think they
know what design and creation means?
Mr Haughton-James: Yes and no;
it depends. From my experience, with people my age, when I say
that I am going into engineering, they ask, what field, and I
will tell them and they understand. But for my parents, I have
to explain in more detail for them to understand. Everybody has
just started to have an understanding of engineering.
Q64 Dr Gibson: Would you just go
along the line, please.
Mr Abioye: For me, I would like
to make a difference; to try and change things around and see
how things could work in the near future. Being an engineer you
tend to create things and make things look different.
Q65 Dr Gibson: David, what is your
experience?
Mr Lakin: When I came to start
making my choices, I said that I wanted to be a designer. I was
not aware of the different types of engineers, I just wanted to
be a designer. I was quite fortunate because my father was a production
engineer and he said that if I was going to do it, I was going
to do it the proper way and get an apprenticeship. I knew I wanted
to do something in design but not necessarily in engineering until
I got involved with it and now the answer is that I want to be
an engineer.
Q66 Dr Gibson: Rachael and Shorna-Kay?
Miss Mensah: In primary school,
I was thinking of careers involved with science and when I first
entered my secondary school, I knew what type of science I wanted
to do, which was forensics. Now, just recently, I have got into
engineering, so my mind is changing again. I hope to do something
along the lines of engineering in the future; it might not be
my main job, but I hope to be involved with something to do with
engineering.
Q67 Dr Gibson: Do people encourage
you; not just teachers but your friends and family?
Miss Mensah: I do not have many
friends who know about engineering but the ones that do are interested
themselves so they encourage me.
Q68 Dr Gibson: What do they say?
Do they say that you are a nerd if you do engineering—your
other friends?
Miss Mensah: To them, because
I have not really experienced engineering, or the way I have experienced
it, when they hear the word "engineering" they automatically
think hard work, so they are not interested in hard work. One
thing that scares me about engineering is the fear of failure—of
creating something that does not work out. That is what scares
me the most and I think they might have that fear also. More competitions
and things like that would get them more involved and excited,
because the effect that engineering has on me I am sure can have
on everybody else.
Q69 Dr Gibson: What about you Shorna-Kay,
what is your experience with friends and family, when you say
you want to be an engineer?
Miss Reid: They encourage me to
take up what I want. Before that, I thought I wanted to be a doctor,
but when I started to win more competitions, I decided that if
I am good at engineering I should take it into consideration.
Q70 Dr Gibson: Do you think you could
convert other young people of your age group to do engineering?
Do you think more could be done there to encourage them? Do you
think you are the best people to talk to them, or the teacher,
or should everybody should be talking to them, or what? How can
we get more people to be engineers, because you are obviously
enthusiastic?
Miss Mensah: Teachers, mainly,
and people like Le'val and Josh, because they are younger people
so that when they speak to us we take more notice, because they
experience the same things that we experience and are like role
models that we can look up to and we would listen to the advice
that they give us.
Q71 Dr Gibson: You said earlier that
there are no role models that you can look to in engineering,
but you must have role models in life with other interests that
you have. Is that true? You can look up to—the Chairman
said Amy Winehouse—her days may be numbered but who knows?
Who do you look up to, David Beckham? Well, maybe not now, but
are there role models in your life, people you look up to and
say that you would like to end up like them—not necessarily
engineers?
Miss Mensah: I do not have role
models.
Q72 Dr Gibson: You just get on with
it?
Miss Mensah: Yes.
Q73 Dr Gibson: Has anybody else got
any views on that? How do you feel about this, Chris?
Mr Martin: Perhaps slightly differently,
because I worked in industry for about ten years and I am an engineer
and I am happy to be an engineer. I am quite proud of the role
it has. Certainly, when I was growing up I was not aware of what
an engineer was or what they did so it was not a role model that
I aspired to be. Most children want to be racing car drivers or
pilots or doctors because that is something they know and see
in the press.
Q74 Dr Gibson: Some of you have come
up with words like "creativity" and "innovation".
When did those words come to you in your life? When I was your
age, I do not think those words were even in the dictionary. An
engineer was somebody who fixed things, made railway lines and
was normally Scottish, because they are the best engineers, and
we were brought up to believe all that mythology. Where did the
words come from; do you get that at school?
Mr Lakin: At school the students
are involved in projects in clubs and competitions, they start
hearing these words and start relating that to engineering.
Q75 Dr Gibson: You mentioned East
Enders, dirty hands stuff, Phil, etc., it is different, and you
get that at school, that is where it comes from?
Mr Lakin: Yes, by the teachers
and by external role models coming in and talking about creativity
and how engineers can change things. That is how students change
their perception; that is how they start, by repeating these words
and thinking about them. Role models are very good at changing
people's perception. As Rachael mentioned, Josh and Le'val, because
they are so close to their age group talking about it they can
relate to it rather than a 50-year old gentleman in a suit talking
about engineering. It is a million miles away from where they
are, but if they can see somebody cool like Josh and Le'val saying
that they are engineers and proud to be doing it, then they can
relate to it.
Q76 Dr Gibson: Are there any groups
of people in school who are less likely to be engineers than others?
Are they discouraged in any way? Quite obviously, here we have
young men and women wanting to be engineers but in schools is
it different in your experience? There was a time when young women
did botany and boys did all the hard zoology, cutting up things.
That is changing a bit.
Mr Lakin: Boys do tend to take
it up more than girls.
Q77 Dr Gibson: Why?
Mr Lakin: Because boys see the
excitement of making things and designing and making fast cars,
etc.
Q78 Dr Gibson: But why should girls
not feel like that?
Mr Lakin: Exactly. So we are working
very hard with the schools to change that, to show the girls that
it can be related to them. We find that the way it is offered
to girls is all wrong; the way it is explained to them and the
way that it is shown, is all wrong and it turns them away from
it. We work very closely with the United Kingdom Resource Centre
for Women and just changing the way that what is offered to girls
is worded and presented, you offer them a picture and instead
of having three white males doing something, we make it gender
and culturally aware to include females.
Dr Gibson: And here we have a committee
with no women on it at the minute!
Chairman: On that note, we will come
to an end of this first session. Could I just thank collectively
all our young engineers this morning. You have given us a great
start to our inquiry and demonstrated that there are a lot of
key points coming through from you in terms of how we can turn
people on to engineering, and one of them is to have young non-Scots
engineers talking to you. Thank you all very much indeed. Can
we bring our second panel in now. We are going to introduce you
now to one of the world's greatest engineers, so if you want to
stay you are welcome.
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