Engineering Skills (Perkins Review)

Debate between Peter Luff and Andrew Miller

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Peter Luff]

Or the daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace, who has a day named after her, and rightly so. I entirely agree that we need more heroes and heroines to inspire the younger generation.

The challenge is urgent. Engineering UK’s recent assessment also states:

“It is concerning that these challenges seem most intense in sectors that should be key drivers of the economic recovery… Responses from firms in the engineering, high-tech/IT and science areas show the highest proportion of both current and future problems in recruiting STEM-skilled employees, with more than one in four reporting current challenges in recruiting technicians (29%) and STEM graduates (26%).”

But still, engineering faces a crisis of misunderstanding. The excitement and challenge of modern engineering is still not properly understood outside engineering. The word “engineering” itself is a problem—“applied science” might be a better description of what engineering means—but we are stuck with the word and we must make it work. Engineering needs to be as highly regarded in this country as it is in countries as diverse as Germany, Jordan and India.

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

It is not the word but the interpretation of the word that is the problem. A doctor of engineering is an honourable profession in Germany. We must get away from the class-based assumption that engineers have dirty fingernails. Engineering is a high-skilled profession, and we must reflect that in this debate.

[Peter Luff]

The hon. Gentleman explains the purpose of my remark better than I did, and I am grateful for his intervention.

Engineers cannot tell us what they do, at least not consistently. Ask an engineer what engineering is, and they will often give compelling answers that are brilliantly insightful, but engineers are all different. I think it was the Prime Minister who recently described engineers as

“the poets of the practical world.”

He is right, and it is that sense of wonder at what engineering can achieve that will help us to achieve our objective of getting more young people into engineering.

I like the description on the bottom of a Women’s Engineering Society poster:

“Engineering is all around us. It’s in the phone in your hand and the shoes on you feet. It’s in sub-sea pipelines and supersonic planes, towering skyscrapers and nanotechnologies. It’s even in the perfectly-baked cupcake (ovens don’t heat themselves). And it’s engineers who make all this possible—just try imagining a world without them.”

We must make engineering more diverse, not for the sake of political correctness but because members of ethnic minorities and women who are not engineers but could be are missing out on one of life’s great opportunities. Engineering skills shortages would be considerably less acute if we could make engineering more diverse.

I am grateful to the Women’s Engineering Society for drawing my attention to an article in this month’s Top Gear magazine containing 40 images of a Formula 1 team. All the people are white men except the press officer and the six hospitality staff, who are in short skirts, of course. Intriguingly, the head of electronics looks rather like Doc Brown from “Back to the Future.” Perhaps Top Gear wants to take us back to the future of a world in which engineering is dominated entirely by men. Even Jeremy Clarkson might be a little embarrassed by the stereotypes portrayed in the article. The girls at Silverstone university technical college, whom the article purports to be about, are very cross that they are being so badly misrepresented by the magazine. I think Top Gear will be correcting the record, but the article is an example of the kind of problems we face.

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[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point. Does he agree with me and my Committee that part of the problem is the failure of the Department for Education to provide the space for continual professional development among our teachers?

[Peter Luff]

I agree that CPD is clearly an important component of what is needed to achieve the sea change, but it is not the sole answer. There is no one silver bullet; what is needed is a coherent, organised communication and marketing campaign encouraging teachers, parents and the young people they inspire to do the right thing. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but that is only part of the solution. The exciting and stimulating story of UK engineering needs to be told to the wider public, and it simply is not being told. This is a massive marketing failure, and not an easy one for engineers to resolve. Indeed, it will not be easy even for marketing professionals, but at least they are used to dealing with hard-to-sell products.

As the report underlines, the action taken by engineers to remedy that market failure has been to create “a wealth of initiatives” and therefore a “complex” and “confusing landscape”. The engineering community’s lack of engagement with marketing professionals to develop a targeted marketing programme has inevitably led to this ineffective but well-intentioned, if costly, muddle. In the report, we read that we need a “high profile media campaign”. Intriguingly, the word “media” is dropped in the summary of recommendations, and rightly so. What is needed is not a media campaign but a well-considered marketing programme, which will include as only one part of it an engagement with all types of media that reach eight to 14-year-olds, speaking to them in their language and not the language of engineers. Such a programme must emphatically not rely on only one “annual event”. Many events can be part of such a campaign, including Tomorrow’s Engineers week and the excellent Big Bang fair. A campaign is not an event or even a collection of events; it is a disciplined programme of communications activity that goes on all year.

A recent report drawing on discussions at a meeting jointly hosted by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology in February, with key players from some 30 organisations representing industry, academia, sector skills councils and Government, concluded:

“It is therefore crucial that all the sector skills councils, trade associations, third-sector enhancement and enrichment organisations as well as existing engineering professionals, work in unison rather than isolation. Passionate urging and fragmented campaigning at best confuse prospective interest and at worst turn it away. It is only through a co-ordinated system and consistent messaging from all involved that growth through a rebalanced economy can occur.”

I agree with those wise words from the engineering community.

The Royal Academy of Engineering, working with Engineering UK, is well placed to achieve that. I hope they will rise to the opportunity—with, of course, the active encouragement of the Government.

[Andrew Miller]

rose—

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

The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) and I go back a long way. We sailed under Sir George Zambellas, now the First Sea Lord, on HMS Argyle many years ago—

[Peter Luff]

In 1996.

[Andrew Miller]

In 1996 or thereabouts. The hon. Gentleman has gone a long way since then. He and I remain humble Back Benchers in this debate, but we both have a passionate interest in the subject.

The hon. Gentleman made observations about how UK engineering is presented. I was infuriated by the failure of the “Top Gear” programme, when it held that fantastic event in the Mall, to present Vauxhall Motors as one of the great British engineering success stories. The griffin motor corporation started just down the road over in Vauxhall, but is now making cars in my constituency and vans in Luton. According to Jeremy Clarkson, however, Vauxhall Motors was not good enough to be exposed to the British media. People creating such a bias is part of the problem.

I make my second point to both the Front-Bench spokesmen: this is not about the party political game, but about the future of a critical part of British infrastructure. We could all talk about a number of good news stories, but we must be mature and also reflect on some of the problems that we are facing.

The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire reflected on the work of LEPs. We could have a long ideological debate on LEPs versus regional development agencies, but that would not be constructive. Some LEPs are starting to move positively in the right direction, including my own one in Cheshire, which is chaired by Christine Gaskell from Bentley. More importantly, a number of the major companies in the broader north-west are starting to pull together a solid science and engineering policy for the region, reflecting the collaboration by LEPs across boundaries. Some might say that that is reinventing the RDA, but I do not want to go down that track today. Those companies are presenting a coherent, joined-up policy in the way that we need.

Following on the heels of my Select Committee’s report on engineering skills, the Perkins review came to a similar set of conclusions. On continuing professional development—the issue on which I intervened on the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire—we recommended that engagement with industry be a core requirement of teachers’ continuing professional development. The Perkins report says:

“The engineering community should provide continuing professional development for teachers, giving them experience of working in industry”.

Here is a message that can be sent out from both Front Benches to industry: facilitate that. Coming from both Front Benches, that message would be hugely powerful.

Both reports agreed that the vocational training route into engineering was under-appreciated. The Committee was critical of Government changes to the engineering diploma following the Wolf review. The Perkins review did not comment on the reasons for the changes, but stated that

“the Royal Academy of Engineering has already led work to develop a suite of successors to the Level 1 and 2 Diploma Principal Learning qualifications in engineering.”

The review went on to say that those have been

“accredited by Ofqual and submitted for approval for the 2016 Key Stage 4 performance tables.”

Those are important steps.

The Minister has been working closely with his colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), on some important matters that will help this process, but I have to say this bluntly: it is vital that we break down the ridiculous barrier that still exists in the minds of the many people who think there is a brick wall between skills that are traditionally called vocational and skills that are traditionally called academic. Personally, I do not like the word “vocational”—it seems reflective of training to be a priest or the like. Nor do I like using the word “practical” for such skills, because chartered engineers such as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who has just left the Chamber, need to learn how to use the tools of the trade.

There needs to be a continuum across engineering, so that people who join the profession, perhaps as technician apprentices, have the opportunity to move forward through higher level apprenticeships to develop to their maximum potential. We need to open that door. The failure at the moment is that we have a structure that does not allow that flexibility and is too segmented, based as it is on the roles of the sector skills councils, the further education colleges and the universities as three separate groups of organisations instead of as a continuum providing for the needs of each trainee.

[Peter Luff]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I am sure he would wish to remind hon. Members that in companies such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce apprentices flow through to very senior management levels—in fact, it is extraordinary how successful engineering apprentices are in those big organisations.

[Andrew Miller]

I absolutely agree. My point is that that happens despite the system. Companies recognise that apprenticeships are the way to develop the skills that they need.

That point leads me neatly to my third observation about the comparison between my Select Committee’s report and the Perkins review. We talked about the university technical colleges. The Committee welcomed UTCs, although it cautioned that

“the network of UTCs will not provide nationwide coverage and the Government must also focus on good engineering education in schools and colleges.”

Perkins says:

“Government should build on the UTC experience and seek to develop elite vocational provision for adults”.

All that is enormously important. As part of our inquiry, one of my senior advisers, Xameerah Malik, and I went to see the JCB academy. I recommend the visit to everyone in this room: it is an exemplar of what can happen if the mix is right. I left there saying to Xameerah, “I want to go back to school.” It really is an exciting place to learn. Very cleverly, the academy has created an environment where people get inside problems—address technical education as well as other more academic and broader subjects by getting inside them, in a way that neither traditional secondary schools nor traditional grammar schools ever did. It is an exciting place to visit and I commend it to everyone.

How we develop in this sector requires a different approach. In my own area, we are starting to put together a proposition, which I hope will go before the Minister in the not too distant future, on creating such a vehicle inside the community which provides the skills necessary for the automotive, aerospace and chemical sectors in my constituency. It is hugely important to try to make that happen.

The difference between us is not in the content of my Select Committee’s report—my staff, Xameerah Malik and Myfanwy Borland, have done a fabulous job in pulling together some comparisons between the Perkins review and that report. We need to try to move to action on behalf of the Government—with, I hope, the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), who speaks for the Opposition, as I would like to see a genuinely joined-up approach.

My plea is that, rather than trying to identify where minor differences might exist between the political parties, Members on both Front Benches get together to create a long-term solution to take us through a generation. This issue cannot be solved within one Parliament; it needs to be addressed in the long term, so it is vital that we get that joined-up response. It is also vital that we hear from the Minister that the Government will approach this issue in a collegiate manner and provide a solution that helps us to solve the problems that the hon. Gentleman cogently set out.

I call on Members in all parts of the House to find a way forward to address the proposals that John Perkins has cleverly put together and to ensure that our engineers, like German engineers, as I mentioned in an intervention, are referred to as doctors of engineering and held in high esteem. They should be, given that they make an enormously valuable contribution to the society in which we live.

Educating Engineers

Debate between Peter Luff and Andrew Miller

Thursday 16th May 2013 Westminster Hall

[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.

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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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[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.