An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1985-1988: THE TOMBS YEARS 49other qualifications, such as BTEC awards, were acceptable. Industry wanted broadly-basedgraduates, a need that was supported by the EngC by publishing ‘AS Levels are Important’ inSeptember 1987 and by involving its Industrial Affiliates (see below) in its consultations anddiscussions. The EngC also supported the Higher Technology and Engineering ConversionCourses (HITECC) offered by polytechnics. Close links with the Engineering Professors’Conference (later Council) were also maintained to develop such courses.The University Grants Committee (UGC) also sought proposals for an improved coursestructure. At the same time the range of existing courses was examined by the EngC and theIndustrial Affiliates, culminating in the EngC report of December ‘Restructuring ofEngineering Higher Education’, offering three possible models for change. This attractedwide publicity in the national, educational and institutional press. Over 200 formal responseswere received during 1988 with widely varying views from the Professional Institutions,industry, academia, trades unions, training boards and collective groups. As 1988 progressed,the divergence of opinion narrowed when other, external, initiatives emerged and those mostinvolved in developing engineering education began to work together. An independentrapporteur was engaged by the EngC to analyse the responses during 1988 to form the basisof a more closely-defined proposal that was published in November 1989.The EngC was awarded a contract worth over £160,000 by the Manpower ServicesCommission in 1987 for a pilot Engineering Applications Demonstrator Project to becompleted in early 1989. This pilot was undertaken by nine Higher Education Institutions(HEIs) under the guidance of a steering committee comprising representatives from the EngCInitial Education and Training Committee and the Nominated Bodies. New approaches wereconsidered towards incorporating the Engineering Applications 1 (EA1) and EngineeringApplications 2 (EA2) concepts of Finniston into degree courses, to bring together engineeringtheory and practice. Industry co-operated in most schemes. The resulting examples and ideas,due for publication in 1989 as we shall see in Chapter 4, were to be used by many other HEIs.In February 1988 as a joint statement, the EngC and the Society of Education Officerspublished ‘16-19 Education and Training’, spelling out the need to widen access to highereducation and for greater recognition for non-traditional routes. In another collaborativeventure the EngC, jointly with the Further Education Unit in March 1988, published ‘TheKey Technologies – Some Implications for Education and Training’. This accompaniedpresentations made at the South East Consultative Panel for Physical Sciences in FurtherEducation and at a National Conference, hosted by Gloucestershire College of Technology.This publication was also used in the Training Agency’s Experimental Programme and in theTechnical and Vocational Educational Initiative (TVEI) and by others managing theintroduction of technology in schools.The EngC ExaminationOn 15 September 1985 the Examinations Department moved from the former CEI base atOrchard House, Westminster to Savoy Hill House, not far from Aldwych, so joining theRegistration Department in offices leased from the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Thisnew location was conveniently closer to the EngC main offices in Maltravers Street.In 1987 the numbers of candidates accepted to sit the EngC examinations fell for the firsttime for some years (by almost 1,200), chiefly because of the higher standards introduced bySARTOR. There was now a requirement for formal course work and a project being included© Engineering Council UK 2004