Institution news
The UK’s decision to leave the EU places greater emphasis on education and training of home grown talent, says
Peter Finegold, our Head of
Education and Skills, Policy and Research.
There is widespread agreement that our future economic success will be reliant on increasing the skills and cultivating the talents of all young people. To bring the UK’s productivity into line with our competitors, and to bring about a fairer more socially mobile society, we need a far greater proportion of highly skilled, numerate, digitally and technologically literate young people.
As part of the Institution's Manifesto for 2017, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers is calling for all political parties to commit to:
1. Embark over five years on establishing a broader school curriculum to age 18, removing the need for early specialisation that is seen as being both detrimental to engineering as a sector and to young people’s opportunities. This policy would bring the UK into alignment with most other education systems globally. It would improve gender balance in engineering and increase interest in technical training from people from all sections of society.
2. Ensure that the Institute for Apprenticeships’ role as guardian of quality for apprenticeships is supported and strengthened. With current policy focusing on 3 million ‘starts’, we wish to see greater emphasis placed on ‘completions’, a shift from the policy that would significantly reduce the figure of failed apprenticeships from the current 30% level.
3. Continue to support the current apprenticeship levy and draw on some of the revenue this generates to increase uptake and participation, especially from groups under-represented in the engineering sector. The greatest threat to apprenticeships and technical education is the widespread ignorance of the value of pursuing these routes. On this basis we request that employers be permitted to draw on upto 10% of their levy entitlement to offer work experience placements and paid internships for post-16 students. Students could then experience first-hand, career opportunities that they would otherwise never have considered.•
4. Draw on some of the revenue generated from the apprenticeship levy to support and expand the professionally inspirational STEM Insight programme. This programme places school teachers and college lecturers in modern industry, to reframe their perceptions of the world of work beyond their own experience [Cost would be about £5 million a year].
5. Present as part of an industrial strategy, a robust and fully funded School Careers Strategy for a modern technological UK. This would involve fully implementing the benchmarks from the Gatsby Foundation’s Good Career Guidance report that would enable schools to implement, maintain and monitor progress [The cost would be about £160 million a year].
Discover our manifestos for other sectors: