Engineering: turning ideas into reality - Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee Contents


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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