Skills: Importance for the UK Economy and Quality of Life

Lord Mair Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, Lord Aberdare, for introducing this important debate. I also congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Hale and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, for their excellent maiden speeches.

I will make two points, declaring my interests as an academic and a practising engineer, as set out in the register. The first is on the acute shortage of skilled engineers and technicians, who are so important for the success of the economy, and the second is on climate change and the pressing need for green skills to be embedded in our education system.

A recent report led by the Institution of Engineering and Technology estimated that there is a shortfall of around 200,000 workers in the STEM sector. It called on the Government to help tackle the UK’s engineering skills shortage by embedding engineering into the current school curriculum. This is consistent with the findings of the recent inquiry of this House’s Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, mentioned. Like them, I was privileged to have been a member of that committee.

A key finding of our report published in December is that there has been a significant decline in recent years in the number of pupils taking up technical subjects during key stage 4—14 to 16 year-olds. This is coupled with a wider decline in the opportunities available throughout the education of 11 to 16 year-olds to develop practical skills. Our committee heard from many witnesses that the current GCSE curriculum is too full and overly focused on academic pathways. Our report recommended a more balanced national curriculum to enable all pupils to study at least one technical or vocational subject should they wish. We recommended that the EBacc performance measure should be abandoned, as was so forcefully advocated in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. Creative, technical and vocational skills must not be sacrificed in favour of an overly full curriculum of academic subjects, as so well articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton.

The UK must do much more to encourage children to develop STEM skills, including practical skills, and to make full use of them. This is not just about universities and higher education. Although we have outstanding engineering courses in our universities right across the country, more than half our young people are not suited to universities. The importance of further education colleges has been overlooked for far too long and the opportunities for attractive degree apprenticeships are growing. Both these routes were spoken about by the noble Lord, Lord Harrington of Watford. They could have a major impact in reviving the fortunes of vocational and technical education, critical for the engineering industries. It is highly significant that in Germany 20% of 25 year-olds have a higher technical qualification, whereas in the UK the present figure is only 4%. That is because in Germany there is a much wider range of opportunities in technical education for young people.

My second point relates to climate change and green skills, about which the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, have spoken. There is an urgent need to fast-track vital green engineering skills into our economy by 2030 at the latest. Led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Engineers 2030 is an education and policy programme rethinking engineering and technology skills for our future world. It challenges how the engineering workforce needs to be different and how we should teach and professionally develop young people. We need to do things differently. The reality is that right now we lack sufficient numbers of engineers and technicians to deliver even the commitments already enshrined in legislation. The demand for substantial growth in green jobs comes at a time when engineering skills have largely stagnated over the past 10 years. In higher education, the proportion of students studying engineering has remained at around 5% for the past 15 years in this country; this compares with 22% in Germany.

A large proportion of young children have a strong preference to contribute to solving environmental problems and achieving net zero. It must therefore be a top priority that we equip them with the green skills and technical tools to do this, particularly promoting greater engagement of girls and young women. Gender diversity in engineering remains largely static. According to EngineeringUK, women made up just 17% of the engineering workforce in 2021. The real barrier to girls entering the engineering profession is perception. Many girls miss out because they perceive that engineering is only about machinery or hard hats and construction—apparently subjects only for boys—and they do not want to be thought of as the odd one out. This mistaken perception is also widely held by parents and by many teachers. In reality, engineering is very much wider than machinery or hard hats and construction. Engineering is simply applied science, which employs—I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—very clever people. It covers a huge range of subjects, many of them involving green skills that will build the net zero world of tomorrow, ranging from biotech to environmental solutions and from innovative new materials to novel energy systems such as hydrogen, all of which are potentially hugely attractive to both boys and girls.

In summary, both our economy and our path to net zero depend critically on engineering. There is a substantial untapped resource of future engineers and technicians—especially girls—in our schools. We need to address this urgently and plug the skills gap. I look forward to the Minister’s response.