BIS scientific adviser launches £49m engineering skills call to action
4 November 2013
The chief scientific adviser to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has published a major analysis of the UK’s increasingly lean engineering talent pipeline, with the government also making £49m of skills funding available.
Mon, 4 Nov 2013
The chief scientific adviser to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has published a major analysis of the UK’s increasingly lean engineering talent pipeline, with the government also making £49m of skills funding available.
BIS describes Professor John Perkins’ report as “a call to action to government and the engineering community to inspire future engineering talent and address the skills shortages within the industry”.
As regular recruiter.co.uk readers will know, this is far from the first scheme to attempt to tackle the issue. A month ago, a group of major UK engineering and/or defence employers formed the 5% Club, committing to a target of 5% of UK workers being on a formal training scheme, while last year saw the expansion of a national web-based skills deployment system, Talent Retention Solution, to include graduates and students.
The new report – to be made available online shortly after a technical delay at BIS – demonstrates what the government has done, what it is doing and what it plans to do to strengthen engineering skills in the UK, and sets out plans to work with partners in education and industry to improve the quantity and quality of education for engineering.
In addition to the report, the government’s £49m funding for engineering skills includes:
Business secretary Vince Cable also comments that a governmental redesign of the curriculum and teacher development, and additional funding to support these changes, will tackle a root cause of engineering skills shortfall – the shortage of young people choosing subjects relevant to such careers post-GCSEs.
The release of the report comes on the first day of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week, which runs to Friday (8 November).
The chief scientific adviser to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has published a major analysis of the UK’s increasingly lean engineering talent pipeline, with the government also making £49m of skills funding available.
BIS describes Professor John Perkins’ report as “a call to action to government and the engineering community to inspire future engineering talent and address the skills shortages within the industry”.
As regular recruiter.co.uk readers will know, this is far from the first scheme to attempt to tackle the issue. A month ago, a group of major UK engineering and/or defence employers formed the 5% Club, committing to a target of 5% of UK workers being on a formal training scheme, while last year saw the expansion of a national web-based skills deployment system, Talent Retention Solution, to include graduates and students.
The new report – to be made available online shortly after a technical delay at BIS – demonstrates what the government has done, what it is doing and what it plans to do to strengthen engineering skills in the UK, and sets out plans to work with partners in education and industry to improve the quantity and quality of education for engineering.
In addition to the report, the government’s £49m funding for engineering skills includes:
- Up to £30m employers can bid for in the new year
- A new £18m ‘elite training facility’ at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a development agency for the industry
- £250k funding for careers information platform Tomorrow’s Engineers
- £40k to support the Daphne Jackson Trust to develop a new fellowship to support people returning to professional engineering jobs after a career break
- A portal on the National Careers Service website matching businesses that want to promote engineering careers in schools with organisations who can deliver educational outreach activity
Business secretary Vince Cable also comments that a governmental redesign of the curriculum and teacher development, and additional funding to support these changes, will tackle a root cause of engineering skills shortfall – the shortage of young people choosing subjects relevant to such careers post-GCSEs.
The release of the report comes on the first day of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week, which runs to Friday (8 November).
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