Engineering Skills: Design and Technology Education

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) for setting the scene so well on a subject that is of interest to us all. It is nice to see the Minister here, too. I look forward to his contribution. I also look forward to the speech of the shadow Minister. He and I celebrated Leicester City’s win against Newcastle last night as we march on to premier league success, so we have more reasons for smiling this morning than we normally do. As a Leicester City supporter of some 46 years, I must say that we have been through hard times, so it is good to enjoy the good times, too. I digress; we are here to discuss an important issue.

I have spoken on this issue many times in the House, and I have tabled questions and early-day motions. The need for MPs—and Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, as it is a devolved matter—to push for engineering skills and design and technology education has never been more important. When I first became a Member of Parliament in 2010, our unemployment rate was 5.4%; it is now down to 3.9%. To give credit where it is due, that is due to the Government’s economic policy and to our Ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly, who have collectively encouraged job creation. In proportion to our size, job creation in Northern Ireland has matched job creation in south-east England.

Job creation in Northern Ireland is important, but we need a skilled workforce and young people coming through to take advantage of the many good jobs that have been created. The country needs to look to the future and produce a workforce that will allow the jobs of the future to come to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and be part of a resurging manufacturing sector in the high-skilled economy that we are trying to create. We in Northern Ireland are keen to benefit from that, and we have seen some benefits. We have seen economic growth in the Province, with more jobs than ever, but the jobs that have come have too often not offered the quality career that aspiring young people want and need. The jobs of the future will be located in the STEM sectors of our economy, which can make a real contribution towards establishing a more balanced economy across the whole country and producing a more sustainable economy in a volatile global market.

We have to respond to the market. Of course, many people would say that the market is uncertain, as the Chancellor seems to be indicating—we will probably know more about that after tomorrow’s Budget—which raises concern for the future. One reason why our economy was exposed during the recession was the lack of manufacturing jobs. We need to focus more on manufacturing. We cannot let all the manufacturing jobs go outside the United Kingdom. We cannot let other countries take advantage of lower workforce costs. We have to retain as much of our manufacturing base as we can.

When we talk about manufacturing jobs, of course, we have to take account of the fact that manufacturing is part of a global market, and it is near impossible to bring production line manufacturing jobs back to the United Kingdom. Simply, nations across the globe are undercutting us to such an extent that we would have to abolish the minimum wage even to try to compete, and we are not going to do that. We are going in the opposition direction, and the Prime Minister and the Government have committed to introducing the living wage, which is a welcome development. With that in mind, we must seek to bring in high-end manufacturing jobs—the jobs of the future of which I spoke—which require a highly skilled workforce. Such a workforce can only be achieved by investing properly in this field of education, and in apprenticeships, so that we can be globally competitive once again.

We debated International Women’s Day last Tuesday, and a notable achievement of the push for STEM education in schools is that more than 40% of ambassadors in the STEM ambassador programme are women. In last night’s debate on Commonwealth Day, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for East Devon (Mr Swire) said that women were in very high places across the United Kingdom, as they should be. It was once a male-dominated industry with a male-dominated ethos and environment, but real change is now happening in the STEM sectors, and careers are open to all. I am encouraged by what the Northern Irish Minister for Employment and Learning, the Department for Employment and Learning and the Northern Ireland Assembly are doing. We have created a lot of apprenticeships for young people across the gender base. Many young girls are now taking up engineering as a job. The wage structure is such that new starters earn £30,000 to £35,000. Some people tell me that that is not a great wage, but it is a terrific wage for Northern Ireland. Such wages provide opportunity and keep our skill base at home. We want to see more of that.

I sit on the board of governors of Glastry College in my Strangford constituency. At our meeting last Thursday, the careers teacher had an opportunity to indicate some of the things that she was doing to ensure that young people at the school, and particularly young girls, saw engineering and the STEM industries as an opportunity. How do we do that? It is not just about the jobs; it is about pointing people in the right direction and bringing those two things together. In her introduction, the hon. Member for Chippenham mentioned “designer technology”—I wrote it down. That is what we need. We need to get our young people looking towards where those jobs are, which is important to me.

Shorts Bombardier has announced the bad news of job layoffs, but we are hopeful that that will make the company leaner, although maybe not meaner, and therefore more cost-effective, which will be a base from which the manufacturing base can hopefully bounce back. Last Thursday, the Minister for Skills announced more help for apprenticeships across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We are all going to benefit—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England—and perhaps the Minister for Schools will comment on that. I know that it is not his Department, but there are great opportunities to do more.

Indeed, there have been commendable efforts and STEM initiatives, particularly in schools. We need to ensure that those initiatives translate into results and that there are real returns on our investment. The Government have invested some £15 million, and we need results not just for the sake of the economy but for our young people who need to grow up with the security of a top-class career and wage so that they can cement their position here in the United Kingdom.

Despite those efforts, results have been disappointing, and I have some statistics. GCSE entries for design and technology declined by 18% between 2011 and 2014-15. The decline has been even more pronounced among girls, with entries falling by 26%, compared with 12% for boys over the same period. Will the Minister comment on that? Between 2011 and 2014-15, A-level entries for design and technology fell by 24%. Either the Government’s efforts have not taken hold or we need to consider a different way of doing it. I always like to be constructive in debates, so that is not a criticism. It is about how we can do it better and how we can find solutions and improvement.

Efforts have also been made in Northern Ireland’s higher education sector, where the Department for Employment and Learning has taken significant steps to focus on STEM and make changes in the further education sector, universities and colleges. In the 2015 autumn statement, the Government announced that from 2017-18, the equal and lower qualification fee exemption would be extended so that students wishing to take a part-time second degree in a wider range of STEM subjects would be eligible for tuition loans. Will the Minister comment on that?

In addition to supporting those in education, there has been some support for educators in the STEM sector. Trainee teachers in England with a first-class degree or a PhD in physics, chemistry, mathematics or computing are eligible for a bursary of £25,000, which is significant. The bursary for trainee teachers in physics with a first-class degree or a PhD will go up to £30,000 in 2016-17. Those are significant, positive changes to the bursary opportunities that are available.

Compared with November 2010, the number of design and technology teachers has fallen by 2,300, but the number of engineering teachers has risen by 100. Again, it seems that a change in education provision is needed. Have the Government made provision to ensure that there is a sufficient number of engineering teachers so that pupils can take advantage of that opportunity? The situation reflects decreased demand in schools, but it also prompts us to ask what point there is in incentives for teachers in the sector if we cannot even motivate students to take the subject.

There has been some success. In the year 2014-2015, there were 74,060 apprenticeship starts in the engineering and manufacturing technology sector. Absolutely significant steps forward have been taken if there are 74,000 apprenticeships in engineering and manufacturing. It is the highest figure of all comparable years since 2011; that is a big step. There has been some success, but unfortunately, lower figures in schools should raise alarm bells. I urge the Government to act on that, for the sake not just of the economy but of the future of our young people, who want quality long-term and sustainable careers.

I am in the second half of life. Although not everyone in this room is, those of us who are must prepare our young people to come forward—our children, our grandchildren and other people’s children and grandchildren. Let us give them the job opportunities that we want for them. I want to see our young people stay in Northern Ireland; I certainly want them to stay within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That means Scotland staying in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as well, by the way. [Interruption.] The hon. Members from the Scottish National party knew I was going to say that. It has been a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Chippenham for securing it and giving us a chance to participate.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (in the Chair)]

Four people have indicated that they wish to speak. I want to call the Front-Bench spokespersons by half-past 10, so if subsequent speakers could confine their remarks to about seven minutes, I would be grateful. It will enable us to get everybody in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

I am glad to be speaking here today, Mr Bailey, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) on bringing forward the debate.

I wanted to speak in this debate because I had three years in Northern Ireland as vice-chair of the education committee—so a little bit of experience there—and I now chair the all-party parliamentary group on education here. I also worked for three years in the 1980s at Short Brothers, later Bombardier Aerospace, where I was definitely a square peg in a round hole. At university, I remember computer science coming at me for the first time as part of my business studies degree, and in those days—I am a little older than most here—it was about punching cards, stacking them into a machine and pressing the button that said “Run”. I think it worked only once. So the message I would really like to hear is that we need to teach and train everyone in these skills—they certainly passed me by.

I feel that, particularly in Northern Ireland, we have lost our way in education by concentrating too much on certain skills. Because we are devolved and in danger of devolving further into northern powerhouses, midlands machines and all sorts of other things, we must ensure that we all work together, helping each other throughout education, and do not end up concentrating on our little areas.

There are schemes for sharing the skills that are there, such as Catapult, and that is the sort of thing I would like to see as we all work together. I want education to prepare pupils for jobs, life and employment. The all-party group will be doing a survey and an inquiry into future skills, and I hope that all hon. Members here and their colleagues will get involved in helping us to explore what those skills are and how we work at the issue so that people leave school ready for a job.

When I was at Stormont working on education, various statistics came at me. One was that the Chinese produce 76,000 engineers a year. We have to stay better than them, and keep our entrepreneurship better than theirs too. I was also told that 80% of jobs now include IT, and when we went down to our excellent science park in Belfast, we discovered that there is a shortfall of some 30,000 people in Northern Ireland being trained in those skills. That fits with all the other figures. We need to get more people involved, and I think that our approach is wrong.

I will be a little local. In Northern Ireland, we have had Sinn Féin running our education system for more than a decade. It is trying to get rid of the grammar schools, squeezing them from every angle. Grammars are our one chance of getting people to perfect certain skills and certain angles, so we have had to work hard to get changes in so that they all work together. Sinn Féin has tried to get rid of that concentration on high-level skills, to bring everything down to the lowest common denominator. That is where we have lost our way.

We need to get science teaching into primary schools—Sinn Féin cut that and moved it away. It also cut the funding to Sentinus, one of the major bodies involved in making STEM interesting to pupils, and then it cut a lot of the funding to STEM. We are going in the opposite direction, but we have some fantastic teachers—in fact, most of our teachers are good. A teacher at one of my local schools, Creavery, won the award for the best primary school science teacher of the year. We must keep working so that everyone gets interested.

We also have to work on careers and make them interesting. A few years ago, I met someone from Northern Ireland who had gone to China and produced a business skills course, which he sold to the Chinese but not to us. The course teaches everything from sourcing raw materials all the way through to working on them and producing the end product. No one ever taught me that sort of skill at school—how to understand the whole business of trade and creation—and that is the sort of thing we have to get into the teaching. We have to make the area interesting.

I sometimes wonder whether we could not have one big web portal, into which someone would stick the skill they were interested in. Say they put in “Art”: it would lead them down to design and technology, to whether they were going to design pottery, paint paintings or do the interiors of houses or ships. Everything would open up. I have been to various air shows and seen the great big banks of screens about what industry is doing. That could all be on a web portal. Every single angle could be gone down and children and pupils could go, “Wow! That’s what I want to do”. That is what we should be doing. We should be lifting everyone’s education so that they really want to move into the fields of science and technology. It did not work for me.

[Jim Shannon]

You’ve done all right.

[Danny Kinahan]

Thank you. But it could work for everyone. Some of us are art and some of us are history, but we can make things work for everyone. It all interlinks. If I have a message today, it is this: “Please promote and educate in STEM—all the sciences and technology—so that it really grips the students and pupils and makes them interested, so that they want to go out and work in those fields”.