Behind the scenes: A fifth of Crossrail's workforce is made up of engineers
There is growing concern among industry and educators that careers advice in schools is simply not fit for purpose. According to a recent IMechE poll, this is a view shared
by its members, with 42% of respondents agreeing that current careers advice/guidance in UK secondary schools is poor, and just 26% saying it’s adequate. Only 10% believe the advice is worthwhile.
While teachers receive no formal training in how to deliver careers advice to pupils, it has been found that the majority of students will look to them for guidance. However, almost half of those who took part in the poll believe that secondary-school teachers have a poor understanding of business and industry in general, with just 9% saying they are well informed.
These findings are a cause for concern, particularly at a time when the engineering industry is desperately seeking new talent to enter the profession. Students need to be told about the diverse and rewarding careers on offer in the engineering sector and too few teachers are able to do so.
However, a partnership of employers, professional bodies, charities and educationalists has joined together as part of a high-profile initiative to try to overhaul the antiquated careers advice on offer in our schools. The Teacher Industrial Partners’ Scheme (Tips) provides Stem teachers with a two-week work placement within industry to help them better explain the diverse range of careers that the sector offers to students.
The scheme was launched by the IMechE this summer in conjunction with Project Enthuse, which provides bursaries to teachers to enable them to attend continuing professional development courses, involving the National Science Learning Centre and the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Peter Finegold, head of education and skills at the IMechE, explains the shared vision of those involved in the scheme. “We want to see a cadre of Stem teachers who would be able to be confident, not only to talk to their students about jobs in engineering, but also to pass on their own personal knowledge and experience of their placements to their colleagues.” In this way, he hopes, the benefits of the scheme will be even more far reaching.
In July, Tips saw its first three teachers complete a two-week work placement at Crossrail. Ronke Fowowe, science teacher at All Saints Catholic secondary school
in Dagenham, says it was an eye-opening experience, not least because of her lack of knowledge about engineering. “I just thought they were all Bob the Builder types who had tools in their hands and made things like bridges. That was pretty much my level of knowledge before the placement.”
During their time at Crossrail, the three teachers experienced a broad programme of the activities that take place at the organisation. This not only involved a look at the range
of technical engineering roles available, but other areas including communications, media and PR.
Fowowe explains that Tips has radically transformed not only her understanding of engineering, but her knowledge of the range of job opportunities available for students at large organisations like Crossrail. “It helped us to build up a detailed picture of how engineering companies actually work,” she said. “Engineers make up around 20% of the company’s workforce, as they’re involved in so many different things that happen behind the scenes.”
Hat trick: Rezaul Haque has become a health and safety convert
All three teachers agree that one of the most eye-opening behind-the-scenes encounters was with Steve Hails, the director of health and safety at Crossrail. Rezaul Haque, science teacher at St Paul’s Way Trust School in Tower Hamlets, east London, says: “It was enlightening in the sense that we never knew just what a big deal health and safety really is. You think that it’s just a boring list of dos and don’ts on the wall, but they showed us it’s actually a thriving culture.”
In particular, an initiative called ‘Target Zero’ caught Haque’s imagination. It embeds key principles of health and safety into every staff member’s working life, not just on-site engineers. “I thought about taking that into my lessons when we do experiments, and telling my students health and safety isn’t just a list of rules, but a culture,” he says.
During the programme, the teachers met with young engineers working at Crossrail sites, and were also appointed two graduate engineer mentors. Haque explains that these meetings were incredibly useful in revealing alternative routes into careers. “We met a lot of people in high-up positions at Crossrail that didn’t have a degree, or go through the traditional route. Many came in through apprenticeships,” he says.
This inspired David Sandell, science teacher at Royal Greenwich Technical College, to come up with a creative way of relaying this information to his students. He is planning to create cards, or mini CVs, to hand out to his pupils, which will include a photo of a Crossrail employee, detailing how they got into the role, as well as information about their job.
“Steve Hails would be the perfect example of this approach, as he holds a prestigious role and didn’t go down the traditional degree route,” says Sandell. “We’ll hand them out to the teachers and at parents’ evening too, because it’s just as important to get the parents to understand what kind of employment opportunities are out there for their children.”
A trip to the London Transport Museum also proved to be a great source of inspiration for the teachers. They observed a lesson being delivered to a Year 3 class in which they were asked to plan a tube-tunnel route on a map of London that would cause the least disruption to its overground residents. The pupils cleverly succeeded in recreating almost the exact route chosen by engineers in the 1800s.
“It was fantastic to see children so enthusiastic about it. I’ve never seen engineering introduced like that,” says Haque. “It’s transformed my idea of engineers from builders who make things to problem solvers.”
As a result of Tips, all three teachers have plans to introduce engineering into their lessons. Fowowe is planning on re-designing the entire physics and chemistry departments’ scheme of work so it has “an engineering focus”, and hopes to encourage her fellow
Stem colleagues to do the same.
“I’d like the science, technology and maths teachers to all focus on one aspect of engineering. For example, if we were to stick with trains, whenever I mention forces in physics I can bring in what happens when a train moves. During maths, students could solve problems of angles using a train diagram.” That way, she says, the students can begin to realise that engineering uses skills from all these subjects.
However, the engineering message won’t just be limited to Stem subjects. All three hope to ask their colleagues to use it as a hook to get children more engaged in lessons. Sandell explains: “For example, to get kids interested in history you could use the centenary of the First World War and look at things like model Type-B buses, which we used at the time to transport troops to the front.”
Both Fowowe and Haque also plan to introduce engineering-focused Stem days to give students a closer look at the industry. And, as a positive by-product of the scheme, Crossrail has said it will maintain its links with the schools and will be happy to send mentors out to support the Stem days. The teachers are also planning to stay in touch to share ideas and resources.
While Tips is still in its early days, it appears the engineering industry is already seeing its value, with the Manufacturing Technology Centre about to commence placements and more firms already in the process of signing up. And if the feedback from its first cadre of teachers is anything to go by, the initiative is likely to be a roaring success. Haque says: “It has inspired me to promote engineering to kids. Now when any of my students ask me, ‘What shall I do as a career?’ I’ll definitely say to them ‘You should think about engineering’, simply because there’s something
in that industry for everyone.”