Engineering Careers

Meg Munn Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nadine Dorries]

I was coming to that point. Engineering was a career choice for boys when I was at school. It was not one that girls were ever interested in, but when I was at Autotech, I realised that such a high-tech form of engineering could be quite attractive to girls. There are so many more opportunities open to both genders now. I know that some girls are involved, but I cannot imagine that we would see many girls wanting to get involved—I do not know what form of engineering the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) did—in mechanical engineering. We just do not go into garages and see girls with oily rags.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Nadine Dorries]

The hon. Lady has something to say about that, but I am sure that the figures would bear it out.

[Meg Munn]

The figures do indeed bear it out. This is a very important issue, and I am glad that the hon. Lady has raised it. However, I am doing a lot of work in and around south Yorkshire focused particularly on getting more girls and women into engineering. Perhaps I can share at a later date some information with the hon. Lady, but it is generally about both sensitising the girls and getting the companies to look at what they are doing that in the past has put girls off.

[Nadine Dorries]

That is a very good point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadine Dorries]

I take that on board, Mr Bayley.

When the Division took place, I was speaking not so much about the reforms introduced by the Secretary of State for Education, as his rhetoric and dialogue about the need for courses to be more robust and for students to become more engaged in the core subjects of maths, science and English.

[Meg Munn]

Does the hon. Lady agree that design and technology is one of the subjects at the core of this issue, because without it many students are not prepared for what they face in engineering?

[Nadine Dorries]

I agree with the hon. Lady that design and technology is an important core subject in the overall context of engineering. As I have said, however, one problem is that, on leaving school, pupils lack the basic skills of numeracy and English that would enable them to achieve in design and technology and other subjects or give them the confidence they require to go into an engineering apprenticeship. They lack the basic core skills that would give them the confidence they need to move into that field. Although I recognise that design and technology is an important subject—one of my daughters did it—others take greater precedence because they are absolutely essential, core key subjects that every student needs to move on to whatever they want to do in life.