Educating Engineers

Andrew Miller Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is the first time I have served under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, so I welcome the opportunity to do so by addressing the Chamber on the Select Committee on Science and Technology’s report, “Educating tomorrow’s engineers: the impact of Government reforms on 14–19 education”. The Committee produced the report unanimously back in February. We dealt with the impacts of the English baccalaureate, university technical colleges and changes to the engineering diploma. I will also comment on the Government’s response to our report, and as we are in education mode, I will be generous and offer the Minister seven out of 10 for that response. It is a good score—I never got those sorts of marks in my classes.

Engineering is crucial to the economy. It has been estimated that the engineering work force produces a fifth of our GDP and half of UK exports. In 2010, the sector generated 25% of UK turnover—that is three times the size of the financial services sector. It is not just the economy that benefits from engineering; we also need to look at health care, energy, transport, construction, defence and many other sectors.

Despite engineering’s importance, the UK is facing a shortfall in the numbers and quality of engineers. About 820,000 science, engineering and technology professionals will be required by 2020, with 80% of those required in engineering. The engineering work force is ageing, and we will need around 82,000 engineers and technicians just to deal with the requirements up to 2016. That demand will not just be met by university graduates; we only produce 23,000 engineering graduates a year, and not all of them stay in engineering. The loss is a particular concern when it comes to women. Only 12% of engineering students in higher education are women, and it gets worse.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

One of the most inspiring sessions that we did during the Committee’s inquiry involved three young ladies who came to speak to us. There was Kirsty, who is currently an apprentice at National Grid, Georgie, who was studying her A-levels, and Georgia, who was doing her GCSEs. They told us that a couple of things that were very important in getting ladies into engineering were having role models and having experience of engineering. Will the hon. Gentleman give us his thoughts on that?

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. National Grid, in its briefing notes for the debate, quotes Kirsty, who said:

“I decided to do an apprenticeship as I could get qualifications and learn a trade at the same time; to do a job that means something; to be able to go into work in the morning and leave knowing I have made a difference to something.”

That young woman was an inspiring witness, as was a young lady from Novartis who spoke to the Cogent awards last year. She explained how she did a higher apprenticeship and was able to say cheerfully, at the end of it, that not only is she ahead of her peer group for her age, but she has a degree, and what is more, she does not have a student debt. She has done rather well. The hon. Gentleman is spot on in terms of the importance of women.

In the Queen’s Speech debate, I spoke about the importance of breaking the artificial barrier between vocational and academic qualifications. In the eyes of far too many people, there is a brick wall between vocational and academic. It is a continuum, and we need to support that continuum’s development.

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and his Committee wholeheartedly on the report—eight out of 10, I would say. He has just spoken about gender equality and gender issues in engineering, and there is a very good passage in his report on the subject. However, I could find no recommendations to address the issues of diversity when it comes to gender and engineering. Was that because he could not think of any, or have I missed them?

[Andrew Miller]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his response to the Gracious Address. It was interesting that the leaders of both parties commented on the sterling work that he is doing on engineering. My challenge to both Front-Bench Members is to follow their leaders and deliver on the quality of the work that the hon. Gentleman is doing.

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question specifically, we were concentrating on 14-to-19 education. In my view, another part of the work that is needed is for us to work on developing continual professional development in schools, including, very importantly, among primary schools, because the seeds are sown at a much younger age. My simple answer is that the issue was outside the scope of our report, but he raises a very important point that ties back into the earlier debate, a large part of which I was privileged to sit in on.

We were keen to find out why there is such a mismatch between the demand and supply of engineers, and how subject choices were made, which is obviously part of it. Let us start with the English baccalaureate. The EBacc performance measure was introduced in 2011, but retrospectively applied to 2010 figures. It recognised where students have achieved a GCSE grade C or above in English, maths, sciences, history, geography and languages. Looking at the impact of the EBacc on engineering education, we heard mixed views. Some welcomed the EBacc’s focus on maths and sciences, which are important precursors for engineering. Some evidence shows that the EBacc has correlated with a greater uptake of science GCSEs. Some 93% of GCSE students are due to take a double or triple science GCSE in summer 2014, which is the highest proportion for two decades.

However, the EBacc has a downside for engineering, too. Maths and science GCSEs are not the only route into engineering. Important subjects such as design and technology are not included in the EBacc, and I know that a lot of companies agree with me on that point. About a quarter of the students accepted on to engineering degree courses in the UK have an A-level in design and technology. Worryingly, a qualification awarding body told us that some schools had been

“switching large numbers of students away from Product Design, Engineering, Manufacturing and Applied Science GCSEs.”

In some cases, that has happened when students were already six months into those programmes.

Although we welcome the EBacc’s focus on the attainment of maths and science GCSEs, we were concerned that important subjects such as design and technology are being adversely affected as schools focus on the EBacc. We recommended that the Government consider how to reward schools and recognise performance in non-EBacc subjects when it reviews the school accountability system.

The TechBacc—the technical baccalaureate—is an interesting development. It was designed when we were conducting our inquiry. In April, the Government announced the TechBacc performance measure as an

“alternative to the A level study route for post-16 education.”

We set out some hopes for the curriculum. First, the TechBacc should offer a broad base of education to facilitate a wide range of further study and career options. Secondly, the Government must endeavour to ensure that the TechBacc does not suffer from the cultural misconception that plagues vocational education—namely that it is for the less bright students, which comes back to my point about that important continuum.

Thirdly, and possibly most controversially, we concluded that schools must be incentivised to focus on the TechBacc and, therefore, that the TechBacc should be equivalent to the EBacc in all respects. A list of courses that will count towards the TechBacc will be published later this year, and I would welcome the Minister’s comments on whether the TechBacc will be equivalent to the EBacc for those schools that offer it. Could she also comment on how many schools might offer the TechBacc?

While the diploma in engineering is yet to prove itself, it has been in place since 2008. The qualification, which is for 14 to 19-year-olds, is available at three levels: foundation, higher and advanced. It sits alongside the traditional educational pathways of GCSEs and A-levels, and it offers students classroom-based learning, combined with work-related practical experience. The engineering level 2 diploma is equivalent to seven GCSEs, with a core principal learning component equivalent to five GCSEs.

As a result of the publication of the Wolf review of vocational education in March 2011, a vocational qualification will count as equivalent to only one GCSE in the 2014 key stage 4 performance tables. That means the engineering diploma would be equivalent to one GCSE in performance tables, despite requiring curriculum time equivalent to several.

The Government caused great unhappiness among engineers in 2012, when the change to the GCSE equivalence of the engineering diploma was announced. Employers considered the diploma to be excellent at providing the next generation of skilled engineers. In paragraph 17 of their response, the Government do not agree with us on vocational skills, saying:

“The performance table reforms were made following a full, public consultation and were not made in haste.”

There is a contradiction in the evidence there, and I would like the Government to publish their evidence, because it certainly conflicts with the evidence we heard.

The engineering community started discussions with the Government over redeveloping the diploma in May 2012. Then, in November 2012, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the engineering diploma would be “reworked”. During our inquiry, the Under-Secretary of State for Skills, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), stated the reworked diploma “won’t be a diploma” but “four separate qualifications”. The Government expected the revamped qualifications to be available for students to sit as early as 2014.

Although we are pleased that the Government have been engaging with the engineering community to redesign the diploma, some of the damage already seems to have been done. The rapidly climbing numbers of students taking the diploma hit a peak and then started dropping. In one submission, the change was seen as

“a retrograde step, out-of-sync with government’s stated intentions to rebalance the economy towards manufacturing.”

We concluded that, in changing the engineering diploma, the Government potentially sent a poor message about the value of engineering education.

The engineering diploma is particularly popular with university technical colleges. UTCs integrate national curriculum requirements with technical and vocational elements. Recently, I was delighted, as part of my personal research for the report, to visit the JCB academy. Bamford is not seen as a natural friend of the Labour party, but, goodness me, he has done an amazing job in investing in that school. It is inspiring place; indeed, people can go into Arkwright’s original mill and see the school’s energy coming from the same mill races Arkwright used to run the mill, although the safety conditions have improved more than somewhat since those days. What an inspiring school; it helps its talented students to work in engineering by encouraging them to get inside problems and work on complex issues.

With his background, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), who speaks for the Opposition, would be intrigued to see how Shakespeare, for example, was taught. “Romeo and Juliet” was being taught when I visited, and I expected a secondary modern, linear approach, with the play being taught from beginning to end, but the students were writing an essay about the causes of conflict between and within families. What a good way of understanding what is, after all, a very complicated storyline. That is the way the teaching is done. It is an inspiring school, and it made me want to go back to school.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Just to reassure my hon. Friend, I should say that I am visiting the JCB Rocester academy on 5 July, and I am looking forward to it enormously.

[Andrew Miller]

My hon. Friend will find some very talented students, inspiring teachers and fantastic equipment. It is worth examining whether we can develop that in other UTCs.

[Stephen Mosley]

As a Committee, we were really impressed by the UTCs, the students and the head teachers; we thought that they were a fantastic idea and that they should be rolled out. However, we had a little concern that that must not be at the expense of teaching science and engineering in mainstream schools. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could touch on that.

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Government must focus on good engineering education in all schools and colleges, and not just silo it in a few specialist institutions. That is hugely important, and it is one of the issues we all need to consider in relation to the success of UTCs. We must not silo them, but integrate them as part of the mainstream offer; indeed, in some towns and cities, we must look at how schools can collaborate to make possible a wider spread of engineering skills among students. That is an important point.

We have just heard about the Education Committee’s inquiry into careers guidance. Its report set out in detail the importance of face-to-face careers advice for young people and recommended that

“the Department for Education introduces into the statutory guidance a requirement for schools to publish an annual careers plan, to include information on the support and resources available to its pupils in planning their career development.”

We looked at careers advice from the engineering perspective, and we concluded that the duty on schools to provide access to impartial, independent advice was laudable.

In principle, we support greater autonomy for schools to provide careers advice. However, the duty poses problems in practice. First, there are resource implications for schools, which are given more responsibility but no additional budget to secure careers guidance. Secondly, there is little guidance on the quality of careers guidance that should be available to students. That partly comes back to the fact that there is insufficient time in the school day for teachers to have the continuous professional development training that would enable them to be on top of what is happening in the economy and in the area surrounding the school. There is a gap, and successive Governments have tried to wrestle with the problem, but we must address it.

The quality of careers guidance can go up only if those giving it have at least some understanding of what being an engineer means. An interesting discovery that we made in research for another Committee report, entitled “Bridging the valley of death”, on the economics of developing small high-tech businesses, was that Lloyds Bank had found time to send some managers on engineering training courses. If a busy commercial bank can do it, it is not beyond the wit of Ministers to develop a similar scheme that would work for teachers, to try to help them to understand a bit more about the jobs available in the communities where they teach.

[Stephen Mosley]

The hon. Gentleman has not yet touched on the value of experience in getting people interested in engineering. One witness went to a lecture on the Bloodhound supersonic car. That young lady said that for her it was a turning point: she had to study engineering, build cars and race them across the world. Opportunities for people to get experience in engineering are hugely important, whether they happen through work experience or education field trips. Does the hon. Gentleman have any thoughts on that?

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[Andrew Miller]

I am a great believer in the importance of practical skills. The teacher I remember most—he is still alive and I met him a couple of years ago—was George Ellis, who taught me woodwork. George had a great talent, with children of any ability—hon. Members may make jokes about my ability—of breaking problems down to the practical level that they could cope with and building up a solution. That is how he taught children of disparate abilities. He was a passionate believer in getting young people out and about to see and experience things with their own eyes. Making an engine work—building it from scratch—and similar skills are ones that we seem to write off these days, because they are vocational and not academic.

That brings me back to my point about the importance of the continuum. Every one of us, whatever we do, needs that continuum of skills. I agree with the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley): the examples that we heard of kids going to see the Bloodhound project, and youngsters being involved in Big Bang and similar projects, are hugely important. The House should press for projects such as Big Bang to continue to be available for young people. We should try to get more state schools engaged in it. It would be great if Engineering UK ended up with a problem that was so big that it could not be managed as a national exhibition, but had to be broken down into regional exhibitions.

[Peter Luff]

It is already doing precisely that. Big Bang is going regional.

[Andrew Miller]

I am aware that it is going regional, but it is still not yet of such a scale that we can say that every school has bought into it. That should be our target: to help Engineering UK to achieve just that.

I was privileged enough, a few weeks ago, to go back to my old stomping ground in Portsmouth and to address the congress of the Engineering Professors Council, to present the outcome of our report. The broad thrust of the report has been welcomed by engineering professors, learned societies, trade bodies and individual companies. Substantial parts of it have been welcomed by the Government. My plea is for us all to work together to deliver on our stated commitments—I refer once again to the comments of the party leaders in the debate on the Gracious Speech. It is up to us to do it, and we have the tools. Let us now get on with it.

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[Stephen Metcalfe]

That is probably a debate for another day. There is no doubt, when we export 50% of our goods to Europe, that it is an important customer of ours, and I would not want to do anything to undermine that, but what does undermine that company’s ability to prosper and grow is the lack of skilled engineers in the wider work force. When I recently visited the company, I was told that although it is managing to recruit apprentices to train up to support its current work base, if it were to be offered a new large contract, it could not go out into the economy and recruit enough engineers to expand, even though we can compete with low-cost-base countries. That demonstrates why it is so important that we bridge that skills gap.

While I am blowing my own constituency’s trumpet, let me say that it is also home to Ford’s research and development facility at Dunton. The facility employs some 4,000 designers, engineers and technicians. For these companies to prosper, we need to bridge that skills gap, so what can be done?

First, we need to change our attitudes towards engineering as a career. We all need to work harder at promoting engineering as the rewarding, well-compensated profession that it is. It is a profession that shapes the world that we live in, and too many people do not understand that. Certainly, too many young people do not understand it. They are not aware of the role of engineering—how it shapes the world that they touch and experience every day. Even when they understand that and have a positive attitude towards it, that does not necessarily translate into wider participation, so we must have a change. We must find a way to engage with young people and show them that they have a role to play in engineering. That starts in schools, but there are concerns, as we have heard, that some of the changes that have been made to our education system will not necessarily support that.

There are concerns that the curriculum changes will do little to inspire people to take up STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and maths. There is concern that with design and technology no longer being compulsory, people will not be able to take their enthusiasm for that subject further. I look forward to being corrected if that is not the case. One of the issues that I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to address particularly is whether the EBacc is likely to encourage schools to concentrate on the five core subjects, rather than offering a broader education that might include exposure to engineering. Concern is also expressed that the new TechBacc does not receive the same recognition as the EBacc. Again, if that could be addressed, I would be most grateful.

There are concerns, as we heard from the Chairman of the Select Committee, that the changes to and perceived downgrading of the engineering diploma could send the wrong message. I am sure that that is not the Government’s aim. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I believe that the Government’s changes to education are designed to give people all the skills that they need to make the most of the potential that they have.

There are plenty of positives, and I will try to touch on them, although I do not want to detain hon. Members too long. One of the things that I welcome most is the university technical colleges—I would certainly welcome one in my constituency. They are a fantastic way of giving young people skills and inspiring them into potentially interesting and well-rewarded careers. My only concern about the university technical college programme is that not enough people will have access to it. I think that they are fantastic and would support them wholeheartedly. I would love to see an engineering and logistics university technical college in Basildon.

I am very pleased that, through an initiative funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Government are creating a network of more than 25,000 STEM professionals and academics who can go into schools to support STEM education and promote STEM careers. I understand that the Government are also part-funding STEM clubs. The hope is that 80% of secondary schools will have one of those clubs by 2015. I have seen how some of the clubs work in my own constituency when they are supported by industry as well. They are fantastic; they really do get people excited.

Both the private sector and the voluntary sector have a role to play, as I have seen locally. The power generation company npower runs programmes that involve people going out into schools and showing young people the practical application of engineering. Network Rail produces support material. JCB, as we have heard, sponsors a UTC. Businesses such as Ford and Selex in my constituency support the engineering and STEM clubs. There are initiatives such as “We Made It!” and Primary Engineer, which is fantastic, because we cannot start encouraging people to be interested in engineering young enough. Primary Engineer is a project that works with key stage 1 and key stage 2 pupils, getting them to design vehicles that they can then test in a competition. It allows them to look at the engineering solution to certain problems. It is fantastic to see in practice.

[Andrew Miller]

I add to the hon. Gentleman’s list the Rolls-Royce awards. This year’s winner is a primary school from Belfast. It is an inspiring project that the youngsters and teachers have been engaged in, but the key there was the partnership between the company and the school to bring the technical expertise that was outside the school into the classroom.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Absolutely, and that leads me to my next point beautifully. All those things are brilliant, and to see them in action is fantastic. My concern is that what is happening is not systematic enough. We are not getting it into every school, and not every pupil or student has access to it. One of the recommendations in the Select Committee report—I was delighted that the Government accepted it without amendment—was that all the learned societies, professional engineering institutions and trade bodies should oblige their members to go into schools, in a systematic way, to promote engineering and technology. Even if it was just for one day a year, if each of those engineers could go into schools across the whole school body, it could have a significant impact.

As a result of some of the initiatives, we are beginning to see an improvement in the uptake of engineering and particularly in the number of engineering apprentices and apprenticeships in our economy. Today, just before I came here, I had some very good news. DP World, which is constructing the London Gateway container port down at Shell Haven in my constituency, will on Monday announce the creation of six new engineering apprenticeships to support the engineering activity that takes place on that site. To see £1.5 billion invested in south Essex is great, but the engineering feat—the reclamation of the land and then the handling of millions of containers—is a fantastic sight and something that will, we hope, excite those six potential engineers.

In conclusion, there are some fantastic organisations and companies throughout our country doing some great things to inspire the next generation of engineers, but we must do more. We face a lack of skills and a shortage of aspiration to give people those skills, but those problems are not insurmountable. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that

“engineers are the real revolutionaries, the ones who take society forward, who create the technologies and the structures which carry us into new worlds.”

Although progress is being made and the general thrust of what the Government are trying to achieve is welcome, we must do all that we can to ensure that engineers can continue to take our society forward and continue to forge a future that will meet our increasingly complex needs. I hope that the Government will revisit our report, take it in the spirit in which it is meant and use it to achieve our shared and combined goal of creating a broader uptake of engineering across our whole society.

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[Peter Luff]

Many young women are doing that most magnificently. ScienceGrrl is a marvellous organisation—I cannot believe how many R’s there are in girl now. They are a fantastic bunch of young women trying to inspire the next generation of female engineers and scientists. I use the word “engineer”, but I am not sure what it means; I think it is really applied science.

[Andrew Miller]

For the benefit of Hansard, girl is spelled G-R-R-L and such is the importance of the subject, they are tweeting the debate.

[Peter Luff]

I do not think that I am allowed to recognise the Gallery, Mr Walker, but I am not surprised. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for correcting the number of R’s. I have their literature in my hand. That exchange has put me off my stride.

Addressing the issue is of huge importance. It is valuable for young people to go back to school to show secondary school pupils doing GCSEs and A-levels what they can do with those qualifications. The problem begins at key stage 2, because many of the role modals available, for girls in particular, in primary schools are female arts graduates. That is not a criticism of them at all, but they do not understand engineering, nor should they be expected to. The key is to get businesses into schools. We cannot expect teachers to correct every problem in our society—it would be unreasonable to do so—so let us get businesses into schools. That is why I particularly welcome what the Minister has done on the design and technology curriculum, and I know that she will be glad that I said that.

Design and technology is compulsory at key stages 1, 2 and 3 and an option at key stage 4. I am happy with that arrangement, particularly now that the curriculum has been so dramatically improved as a result of her interventions, for which I am grateful. As I said to her when we met to discuss it a couple of weeks ago, the curriculum now provides an opportunity to get businesses into schools to support it in a way that helps teachers and does the inspiration job that my hon. Friend and the Chairman of the Committee spoke so powerfully about.

The chief executive officers of the major companies are waiting for this and want it to happen, but as has been said, too much is happening. There are too many initiatives at present. It is a fantastically complex world out there. I hope that the new design and technology curriculum can act as a focus to inspire the institutions, major companies and trade associations to bring the initiatives together in a single place, probably under EngineeringUK’s “Tomorrow’s Engineers” banner, another first-rate initiative. That would bring greater coherence to the massive picture of opportunities out there to inspire young people.

What worries me is that very few of those initiatives are actually reaching my constituency. Primary Engineer, about which my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock spoke so well, is an outstanding institution. Why are the Scots using it so intensely and the English not? The Scots are a great engineering nation, but its penetration into Scotland is much greater than into England. I hope that that can be corrected as well.

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to a Committee recommendation, to which the Government responded in paragraph 52, on the role of institutions. To become chartered engineers, people must demonstrate a certain commitment to the wider community, and one way of doing so is to demonstrate that they have gone into schools and helped inspire and educate a new generation of engineers. That could be made more specific in the regulations on chartered engineer status. If the Government are minded to take forward the discussion on institutions, that is a route that I particularly recommend.

I am in danger of becoming bored by my own message because I am stating it so often, but it is exceptionally important. I am told by my old mentor Lord Walker, “It’s only when you’re sick and tired of your own message that you’re probably just beginning to communicate it to the outside world.” I say to my hon. Friend the Minister: believe in this. It matters a great deal. She should take the wise words of the Select Committee Chairman and the report seriously, and understand that if she can turn around the issue and inspire another 10% of women to participate in engineering, doubling the figure, she will do a great thing for the cause of her gender, for the economy and for the security of the nation.

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[Andrew Miller]

May I plead with the Minister to alter a sentence she has just delivered? When she was describing the move from the post-16 technical baccalaureate, she said “or the academic alternative”. No, it should not be “the academic alternative”. It may be an arts or social science alternative, but she is using language that reinforces the brick wall that I tried to break down.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Yes, I agree to correct that. I, too, want to break down that brick wall, because we will have students doing core maths plus physics and chemistry, as well as core maths plus history and geography or core maths plus an applied occupational qualification. The key is that those qualifications are valued by employers or by universities as leading to progress, which is what we should be looking at. I am pointing out that the fact that part of it is the same maths qualification shows that there is a shared core between the A-level side, to put it that way, and the occupational side.

I think I have covered the point about the accountability tables, and I want to address the issue of the engineering diploma. I explained the philosophy that followed the Wolf review—having a common core until 16, and reviewing the league tables in that light. It is wrong to see the change in the GCSE equivalents of the engineering diploma as downgrading the qualification. We have approved level 2 principal learning in engineering for inclusion in the 2015 key stage 4 performance tables. In addition, three new engineering qualifications for 14 to 16-year-olds, which are being developed by the Royal Academy of Engineering and an awarding organisation, are due to be submitted to Ofqual this summer for accreditation.

It is important that we have a consistent message in our 14-to-16 and 16-to-18 programmes about the status of qualifications in our league table. The progress 8 accountability measure really shows the Government’s intention, which is that students of those ages should be studying core subjects such as sciences, which are vital for engineering. In particular, we need more students studying physics to do engineering, but there is space reserved in the accountability measure for subjects such as design and technology and art.

Many colleagues mentioned university technical colleges, which provide an opportunity for young people to enter the engineering profession. In the 2011 Budget, the Government made a commitment to deliver at least 24 UTCs by 2014, and we are set to exceed that commitment: five UTCs are already open and 40 are in the pre-opening phase, of which 12 are due to open in September 2013, and a further 28 in 2014 and 2015. Those UTCs will together allow around 27,500 students to train as the engineers, scientists and technicians of the future, which is transformative.

When good schools open in a local area, it has a ripple effect on other institutions. For example, the maths free schools, which will be run by universities, will specialise in maths, further maths and sciences for students looking to go to university to study those subjects. Those schools were announced in the 2011 autumn statement and are based on a model from schools already operating in Russia and China. Two have already been approved and are due to open in 2014 at King’s college London, and Exeter. We are in discussion with other universities about the development of more of these maths schools. As they will have university-style tuition—much more seminar style—in maths and science, they will also be able to offer teaching support to other schools in their local area.

An underlying issue in the whole debate is that we need to increase teacher supply in the critical subjects. Maths has the greatest teacher shortage, but physics also has quite a large shortage. The Government are offering bursaries in those subjects. Improving the professional development of teachers in those subjects so that they are inspiring is important in encouraging the next generation. Who do children listen most to? They listen to their parents and their peers, but they also listen to their teachers, and a teacher can make a real difference. Having exemplar schools, whether they are UTCs or maths free schools, will help to improve the quality of provision.

Finally, I want to look at the role of industry in promoting STEM education and engineering. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire pointed out, there are keen institutions that want to get involved in helping schools. However, it does not always happen at local level, and sometimes the coverage can be patchy. As we have cross-party consensus on the issue, I am keen that we work together to promote subjects such as engineering, physics and mathematics and their value to the country and to the individual. Too often, when we wake up in the morning and listen to the radio we hear such negative messages.

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[Andrew Miller]

Thank you, Mr Walker. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this important debate. It is great to see that there is a high degree of cross-party consensus on the matter, and I certainly concur with the Minister’s closing remark that we should carry on working with her Department to ensure that we drive forward some of the areas of strong agreement. It is hugely important that we try to use some of the time to iron out our differences. I certainly want to see the evidence that supports paragraph 27 in the Government’s response, in relation to work experience. The paragraph starts, “We do not believe”. It is not belief I want but facts. As the Minister has appeared before our Committee, she knows that we work hard to ensure that our reports are evidence based. We believe that better policy comes from working in that way.

Some organisations working in the field are doing a fantastic job. Mention has been made of STEM ambassadors, who are doing a great job. ScienceGrrl was mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff). He will be interested to know that a tweet I have just read says, “We love Peter Luff even more now.” Important work is going on in this space, and there is an extraordinary degree of consensus on some of the issues.

About a year ago, I had the privilege of sharing a platform with Sir Kevin Tebbit, at that time chair of Finmeccanica, and previously the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence. He and I were both pleading for greater priority to be given to design and technology. I still think that there is a gap between the Committee’s thinking on that and the Minister’s.

In March last year, I shared a platform with Sir Mark Walport when he was in his role with the Wellcome Trust. Now he is the chief scientific adviser. I urge the Minister to read his speech at that conference. I have it sitting on my desk, so if she cannot find a copy, I will send it to her. He sets out the importance of science practicals, and I hope that we can work strongly together on things like that. There is a huge amount of agreement. Let us carry on working together and ensure that we do justice to the students in our schools and deliver world-class engineers for our world-class manufacturing sector.

Question put and agreed to.