Engineering Skills: Design and Technology Education

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey, I think for the first time. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) on setting out her stall so well at the beginning of the debate. She reminded us that engineering and design and technology education are central to our future economic success and underlined the need for skills to match the requirements of our economy. She also talked interestingly about creating an “innovation-hungry economy”. I liked that phrase; it inspired and encouraged me, and that is what we want for young people, is it not? She also spoke with passion and knowledge about the new, improved design and technology GCSE, which I think everyone in the Chamber would commend. It is an exciting move forward with a lot of potential. She also argued that, because it is exciting and has rigour and clear value, it should be given EBacc status. I will come to that later.

The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) said that he had had words with the Minister about trying to elbow D and T into the EBacc. I can understand why the Minister has difficulties with that, but I will come to that later. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke as always with passion and reminded us that design and technology are even more important than Leicester City’s success this season. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) highlighted the need for better careers information, advice and guidance, which is something I very much agree with. She also pointed to her personal experience of her own design and technology GCSE and the way in which that helped to prepare her for a career as a marine surveyor.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) worked as an engineer and came out with the perceptive statement that the one-size-fits-all approach will not work in this area. That is at the heart of some of the difficulties that the Government are perhaps getting into with their EBacc approach. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) reminded us that a modern economy needs hands-on skills as well as academic skills. I think that is very perceptive. The design and technology curriculum is particularly good at developing practical skills, which he told us were necessary whether making a saucepan or HS2. The hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan) drew on his great experience in Northern Ireland and again underlined the importance of practical skills and careers education, among other things.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) made a significant contribution to the debate by drawing on her experience as a physics teacher and underlined the fact that there is a massive skills gap that needs to be addressed. She drew attention to how the term “engineer” covers a wide range of disciplines. Frankly, we need the practical hands-on engineering skills of plumbers as well as the high-tech engineering skills of qualified chartered engineers. We need it all; that is why design and technology is so important in our curriculum. The hon. Lady concluded by emphasising the importance of the personalisation of learning, and I think she is correct. Learning that combines rigour and the interests of the learner as well as the destination of the economy is the very best sort of learning because that allows everybody to succeed.

If I glance back to 2010, the curriculum was in many ways in quite a good place. It was not perfect, but we had a highly personalised curriculum with a lot of rigour that was driving up performance and moving people forward. That did not mean it did not need to change, but there were a lot of strengths in that approach. I know that from my own experience in leading a sixth-form college at that time. We saw standards improving in local schools, often driven by curriculum innovation, so we saw the five A* to Cs rising, and a couple of years behind that we saw the five A* to Cs plus maths and English rising. Once someone has a sense of achievement and success, it drives aspiration not only for the youngsters in that community school, but for everybody around them. That is the spiral of success that we had in 2010. Hopefully, we can continue to move forward on that.

When the EBacc was introduced, the Education Committee, on which I served, raised concerns in a critical and challenging report. The concerns were around why a particular set of subjects were chosen. Why was ancient history more important than design and technology? Why was Latin more important than business studies? The evidence base was not clear. The examination of what the world of work needs and what the world of education should supply was not there. I think we would all agree that a core curriculum is necessary, but the Government knew without asking anybody what the answer was, and, when probed, came up with the thought that the facilitating subjects of the Russell Group universities were the set of subjects that should determine the EBacc’s central purpose. There is no logical reason why that should be so. Indeed, as somebody who has probably sent more students to Russell Group universities than anybody else here, I know that the Russell Group accept a wide range of subjects beyond those facilitating subjects.

To go down such a route is questionable. To extend the EBacc to 90% of students obviously constricts the timetable even more. Again, I know that from having done timetables in which a limited number of resources had to be managed. Concentrating resources on certain things means other things will not fit. So there are big challenges. I recently spoke to the leader of one of the highest performing multi-academy trusts. He said that they might not go down that road. He pointed to the former Labour Government’s diploma activities as something else that they did not follow because, from their views on what is in the best interests of young people, it does not work, so there is a challenge there.

The Edge Foundation’s submission to the EBacc consultation concluded:

“Imposing an arbitrary set of qualifications on students is not supported by a solid evidence base. The 90% EBacc target is neither necessary nor desirable. It will harm, not help, large numbers of students, reduce the uptake of technical and creative subjects and limit choices open to students and their parents. It could exacerbate the country's growing skills gap, because fewer students will achieve passes in technical and creative subjects linked to the needs of the economy.”

Let us hope that that is wrong, but it is a clarion call from the organisation. The Baker Dearing Educational Trust has been very much behind the movement towards greater skills development and so on.

The Labour party wants to see a broad and balanced curriculum. We welcome the steps towards measuring the progress that children make on progress 8 and attainment 8, because a broader range of subjects are provided. It is important that young people have a core knowledge of the curriculum, including English, maths and sciences. It is all well and good thinking about D and T and the EBacc, but the thing that undermines that the most is not having enough qualified teachers to teach it. Many contributions today have drawn attention to that. The key challenge is to ensure there are enough teachers to teach design and technology, yet at the moment the Government are not getting anywhere near the target they need to achieve this, with just 41% of the target being met, and they are also missing their targets in science and computing.

The fall in the numbers of students taking design and technology is a concern too, given the skills shortages in the economy. Design and technology and engineering are important for delivering the productive high-tech economy that we need to compete in an increasingly globalised world. Forecasts suggest that the UK will need more than a million new engineers and technicians in the next five years. The Conservative Government are failing to deliver the pipeline of talent that we require. It would be a challenge for anybody, so we all need to support the Government in meeting the challenge, but we need to check whether this direction is the right way to meet it.

From manufacturers and construction firms to digital industries and the CBI, businesses in Britain are increasingly warning about the skills shortages that our country is grappling with. I hope the Minister has time to answer the many questions that have been raised in the debate. He is courteous and able and always does his best in that regard.