An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1991-1995: THE FAIRCLOUGH YEARS 93A-Level – getting it right’; in this document the EngC pointed out that there were no obviousstepping stones between Technology in the National Curriculum and Technology in HigherEducation, but offered eight recommendations to improve this situation. By the time theEngC Annual Report appeared in April 1993 there had been no Government response.Looking further at A levels, an EngC report of July 1993, ‘General Studies: Breadth at A-Level?’ concluded that 16-19 year olds were not offered the necessary breadth by GeneralStudies. The EngC proposed five options for improvement, the most favoured being fivesubjects at A Level [similar to the previous ‘Higginson proposals’] to give students a broaderknowledge base - even in the knowledge that this might require honours degree courses to beextended to four years.We may note here that throughout most of this period (1991-95) the Eastern Region TeacherEducation Consortium, whose links with the EngC we described in the previous chapter,continued with its five-year project. However, some consortium partners changed - theGovernment’s Training Agency was fully absorbed into its Employment Department, forinstance, and the Essex Higher Education Institute became part of Essex University.Notwithstanding, the Consortium established links with the Department’s ‘EconomicAwareness in Teacher Education’ initiative, playing a central role in the Teacher Educationcomponent of the Royal Society of Art’s project ‘Higher Education for Capability’. TheEmployment Department provided additional funding to expand this project through theUniversities of Cambridge and East Anglia and the Bedford College of Higher Education.Sir Ron Dearing’s final report on the National Curriculum, recommending that technologyremained compulsory for 14-16 year olds, albeit for a half subject, was welcomed in 1994 bythe EngC. However, the EngC yet again noted the serious deficiencies in technology as asubject in the National Curriculum. In general, the EngC considered it vital for theGovernment to ensure that there was extensive in-service training of teachers and adequatematerials and equipment in the schools. In support of this in July 1994 the EngC published‘Technology Teachers – Getting It Right’ and in December 1994 published ‘The impact ofDouble Science’.In 1995 the EngC’s General Education Committee responded to the Dearing 16-19 reviewand fostered a number of related research projects: ‘The Mathematical Background ofUndergraduate Engineers’ and ‘Competence-based Higher Education and StandardsMethodology’ and also advised on the EngC projects for 5-19 year-olds. The EngC report‘The Changing Mathematical Background of Undergraduate Engineers’ was published inMarch 1995, highlighting deficiencies that were widely reported in the media. The EngC, theSociety of Education Officers and the SCSST set up a working group to investigate means tosupport schools to remedy this problem.During SET7 (Science, Engineering and Technology Week) for 1994 the EngC and sevenInstitutions jointly organised a national painting competition for Primary School children.From 8,000 entries the winner chosen was 5 year-old Sam Bowditch from East Gomeldon,Wiltshire. He was presented with a £50 cheque by William Waldegrave, Minister for Science,while his school received £1,000 and the EngC gained some publicity. In the following year,a children’s colouring competition, a joint event between the EngC and the Institutions tochallenge children to draw an engineer, attracted 10,000 entries. During SET-95 week theEngC commissioned a lecture team featuring TV personalities Kate Belling and Johnny Balland sent the team to seven towns and cities where fourteen performances of ‘Are weengineering a better future?’ were presented to over 6,000 youngsters.© Engineering Council UK 2004