An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1988-1990: THE BARLOW YEARS 63This campaign continued its success during 1989. To assist the move in encouraging girls andwomen to take up a career in engineering, the number of events in the booklet directory‘WISE – Awards, Courses, Visits’ was expanded in February 1989 from 27 to 58 entries andreprinted for free issue thanks to sponsorship from BICC plc. In April 1989 two companion‘Engineering Equals’ booklets were published with financial support from the TrainingAgency. For both booklets the Foreword was signed jointly by the Rt Hon Norman FowlerMP, Secretary of State for Employment, and Sir William Barlow, the EngC Chairman. Thebooklets, ‘Engineering Equals – Higher Education Institutions’ and its companion,‘Engineering Equals – Schools and Colleges’, offered guidance to teachers on methods ofencouraging young women to consider engineering as a career option and avoid the pitfalls ofgender stereotyping. A third version of this booklet, for staff in primary schools, wasproduced in 1990 in partnership with the Society of Education Officers and the Associationof Directors of Education in Scotland and with support from 21 other educational bodies. TheIntroduction to this version was written by Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State forEducation and Science. Copies were distributed to 27,500 primary schools throughout theUnited Kingdom.In 1990 a new 40ft articulated trailer, sponsored by British Rail’s Signalling andTelecommunications Division, was added to the fleet of WISE mobile classroom vehicles.During the year the EngC issued the 4 th edition of ‘Awards, Courses and Visits’, the directorylisting events to encourage girls and women into an engineering career; this edition,sponsored again by the BICC Group, promoted 149 special events. By the close of the year75,000 girls had benefited from the WISE campaign. Of students now entering engineeringdegree courses, 12% were women compared with 7% when WISE began in 1984 althoughonce more the EngC received little, if any, recognition for this major and far-reachingachievement.Neighbourhood EngineersThrough its Neighbourhood Engineers scheme the EngC planned to encourage and harnesslocal enthusiasm to make a genuine impact on entrenched attitudes in British schools towardsengineering, and to change the nation’s culture away from negative images. It was hoped thatfull-time project managers with secretarial support could be appointed in every EngC region.The idea was to link over 30,000 Registrants with local secondary schools in theirneighbourhood so that four or five Neighbourhood Engineers could be allocated to everyschool in the country, giving advice and support on projects, designs and materials. Theengineers would work with the Heads of Science and Mathematics thus meeting theparticular needs of each school in a sensitive and practical way. The scheme, begun as a trialin Devon and Cornwall, South Wales and the South West then underwent a full DemonstratorProject during 1988 in 225 schools in Merseyside and Cheshire. In support of the scheme abooklet ‘Neighbourhood Engineers – Practical Support for Schools’ was published inDecember 1988.In the Merseyside and Cheshire Demonstrator Project over 10% of local EngC Registrantsparticipated. Eric Forth, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Industry and ConsumerAffairs visited the EngC offices early in 1989 to hear at first hand about this project. The DTIprovided £600,000 to help set up the scheme, on condition that the EngC could raise similarresources, particularly from industry. British Nuclear Fuels plc provided one of its engineers,Brian Thomas CEng, on secondment to manage the overall project. Other industries providedfull-time secondees to act as project managers, released engineers and technicians to visit© Engineering Council UK 2004