Engineering Skills (Perkins Review)
Debate between David Mowat and Meg Munn(10 years, 11 months ago)
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David Mowat
I am delighted to hear that. However, I repeat my question: how many engineers do the Government pay £200,000 or £300,000 a year, in the same way as they apparently pay advocates—a subset of them are about to go on strike over their pay—out of public, as opposed to private, money? We think that is normal. That is to do with cultural norms and with an assumption we make in this country about the relative value of careers, which is wrong.
Finally, we have made a lot of progress—even in this Parliament—on education. I welcome a lot of the noise coming out of the Government about the need to promote technical education, maths and physics—the STEM subjects—and all that goes with that. I have been of the view that a liberal arts-biased education system is deeply ingrained in our country. I very much hope that the progress that has been made in the past few years towards emphasising STEM—particularly for women—continues. Fixing the issue is a prerequisite for achieving the sort of economy we will need to have in the next two or three decades.