A Partnership To Inspire Budding Engineers
That the UK is experiencing a shortage of engineers is a well-known fact. That engineering is often absent from the primary or secondary school curriculum is probably not quite as well known. This leads to young people often missing the opportunity to understand what engineering is all about and in turn to relate to it. As a result – and too often – engineering does not feature in their education or career choices. This, in turn, impacts industry in the UK, where companies fight for engineering talent from a much smaller and less diverse talent pool than it ought to be.
For as long as I can remember, one of the most repeated conversations within our industry has been how do we attract and retain the best people needed to fill our vacancies," explained Andy Patten, Business Development Director at ADC Electrical.
"The answer to some degree has been by individual companies investing in training, and to their credit, I know that many AEMT member companies have excellent apprentice training programs producing very good engineers.
"However, as engineers get older and retire, a void is being created within engineering as not enough young engineers are joining the sector to fill the vacancies. Like many areas of engineering, AEMT members are being hit hard by this engineering skills shortage; they invest money and resources in training their teams, but other industry sectors are picking up on this, so now, more than ever, we are losing engineers at all levels to roles outside of the sector."
"This is impacting us all. No matter how big or small the company, you can have a fantastic training program, but if there are not enough candidates with the right aptitude for the work, there will never be sufficient engineers to fill all the gaps. But the question always is – what can we do about it?"
In November 2021, Andy and colleagues from ADC attended the AEMT conference. One of the presentations was from an organisation called Primary Engineer, which highlighted how' in recent years, engineering's presence in the school curriculum has reduced, and in some cases, disappeared, with some schools not offering any engineering-based subjects.
The upshot is that young people might not even know that engineering could be a potential career choice, let alone relate to it when leaving school and looking for work.
"For some, ourselves included, this was a bit of a shock," continued Andy. "For others, I believe it was only a confirmation of what they already knew, or at least suspected, but it would certainly be backed up by the lack of young people wanting to be involved in engineering and the general lack of basic engineering skills in those that do. "On the drive back from the conference, the conversation turned to what had been said by Primary Engineer and what they were doing to bring engineering into the classroom to help inspire the next generation of engineers from primary school level and upwards.
"We could see that the main issues that most people will see with this project are that it must surely be somebody else's responsibility to sort out what is going on in schools. Even if we did get involved, there would be no real short-term benefit for our business, or even longer-term gains, as the pupils we engaged with would be unlikely to join our company in the next ten years when they leave school.
"However, from our point of view, we felt we could not sit on our hands and pretend it was somebody else's problem to sort out. In reality, the outcome of fewer and fewer new engineers coming through the ranks will sooner or later make it everybody in engineering's problem.
"As engineers, it made sense to get involved, with the hope that others would follow suit. The project has the potential to make a real impact and secure a new generation of engineers with a general understanding of the role and what we do as an industry," explained Andy.
ADC contacted Primary Engineer via the AEMT to discuss what it could do to help. The process was straightforward, and everyone at Primary Engineer was very helpful in explaining how they engage with schools, teachers and pupils.
ADC is now several months into the process, and a number of schools local to the engineering firm have signed up for the practical and engaging initiative.
The programme will run throughout the 2022-23 school year with ADC's support and culminates in final judging and an awards event in mid-2023.
Ahead of becoming involved in the project, ADC had the opportunity to experience and engage with other Primary Engineer programmes in the North East, including the project's Leaders Award competition which asks pupils from the age of three to 19, 'If you were an engineer, what would you do?'.
"The overall feeling from working with and seeing the students' efforts is that the interest in engineering is far from dead," added Andy. "There was genuine enthusiasm for working on engineering projects, and some of the thoughts and ideas were inspiring, with the younger ones often having the most creative ideas.
"We have also had the unexpected benefit of receiving work experience enquiries from the schools, and we have worked with some very good young people that have expressed an interest in apprenticeships with us when they leave school next year."
Andy believes it has been a worthwhile experience with some unexpected positive short-term benefits. But he also recognises that, if the future of engineering in this country is to be secured, more companies need to take a longer-term view and get involved in projects like Primary Engineer, so the next generation is aware of what engineering involves and the career prospect it offers.
The pool of potential employees risks becoming smaller over the coming years, so the entire engineering sector needs to work together to encourage new talent – or risk losing them to other more proactive sectors.