An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

92A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILInterfacing with SchoolsIn the period 1991-1995 considerable and sustained progress was made in the field ofschools’ liaison under the auspices of the EngC’s Board for Industry and Regions operatingthrough its General Education Committee.‘Engineering Equals for Primary Schools’ was published in January 1991 and the results of anational survey ‘Gender, Primary Schools and the National Curriculum’ were published inMay 1991 by the EngC jointly with the National Association of School Masters and theUnion of Women Teachers; these results showed that of 256 boys and 247 girls aged five, carrepairs and woodwork were judged to be the province of men while mending and washingclothes remained the domain of women – in other words, 5 year olds in 1991 had the sameperceptions as their parents and grandparents. Among the survey’s recommendations were formore people with good science qualifications to teach the youngest children.In supporting school educational reform in 1991, the EngC helped develop many projects andactivities. These included the Technical and Vocational Educational Initiative (TVEI),science and technology curricula, teacher supply, YEB, WISE, Opening Windows onEngineering and the Neighbourhood Engineers’ scheme. The EngC also evolved a structureof industry-based standing conferences to develop occupational standards leading to NVQs.This work was coordinated by the EOSG, its secretariat co-located with EngC staff.During 1991 the EngC again commissioned Professor Alan Smithers and Dr PamelaRobinson from Manchester University School of Education. This time the purpose was toresearch the impact of local management of schools and of the National Curriculum onpreviously known strategies of mathematics and physics teachers. The results, reported in‘Staffing Secondary Schools in the Nineties’ in that August, revealed the concern from headteachers over never-ending modifications to the National Curriculum and a continuing staffshortfall in both technology and modern languages. This was a saga with a long history and along future!The EngC had joined the Teaching AS a Career (TASC) unit - a joint initiative of the DESand two local authority associations - to encourage young people to develop practical skills,knowledge and understanding. Consequently, a brochure ‘Your Future in TechnologyTeaching’ was published in January 1991, aimed to help recruit more technology teachers.Michael Fallan, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the DES who launched this bookletsaid “I wholeheartedly support this example of cooperation between The EngineeringCouncil and TASC. Technology is crucially important to the economic future of the countryand such initiatives to recruit good quality candidates into teacher training are to bewelcomed”.A one-day conference was organised in 1991 by the EngC, the Association of Advisers inCraft Design and Technology and The Staff College, to provide an awareness of thepossibilities offered by A and AS level technology courses. The EngC commissionedresearch into key issues facing technology in the National Curriculum; the results werepublished in May 1992 in a report (partly sponsored by BP) concluding that the NationalCurriculum technology was “a mess”. An eight-point rescue plan was put forward. JohnPatten, Secretary of State for Education, speedily announced an urgent review (which wascompleted in December 1992) of the Technology Order but in August the EngC produced‘The revision of National Curriculum technology’, followed in September by ‘Technology at© Engineering Council UK 2004