An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1988-1990: THE BARLOW YEARS 67With regard to careers in engineering for young people, the number of bodies sponsoring adatabase of the Engineering Careers’ Coordinating Organisation (ECCO) had increasedduring 1988 from seven to ten. Formerly on TTNS and Prestel, the database was moved toCampus 2000. A conference in Glasgow on ‘Education, Engineering and Electronics’,organised jointly by the EngC, the National Electronics’ Council, the Engineering IndustryTraining Board and the Scottish Development and Industry Council, enabled further schoolsindustrylinks to be debated in November 1988. A new careers’ brochure ‘Engineering forPeople’ (one of the first to be endorsed by ECCO) was tested on young people, advisers andparents and fine tuned during 1989. Consequently 800,000 copies were printed in February1990 for every 13-14 year-old in the UK and selected pages from the brochure were used toproduce posters.A new four-part book to introduce school leavers and graduates to career opportunities inengineering was published at £5.95 in March 1989 by the Ivanhoe Press in association withthe EngC. Termed the ‘Ivanhoe Guide to the Engineering Profession’ this 192-page bookcarried a range of articles on the profession in general and the work of the EngC in part one,items on the engineering Institutions in part two, articles on education, training and careers inpart three and finally, in part four, a directory of major organisations employing engineers.This useful careers’ guide was updated in subsequent years, as we shall indicate insubsequent chapters.At the primary school level, in February 1989, Ted Howarth of the Devon & CornwallECRO, with assistance from DTI, organised a conference in Exeter for primary headteachers,education advisers and teacher trainers. Those present considered the promotion of scienceand technology in Devon primary schools via communications networks, a package plannedto be on line early in the following year.Two joint statements on careers were issued by the EngC during 1989: ‘Careers Educationand Guidance within the National Curriculum’, with the Institute of Careers Officers and theNational Association of Careers and Guidance Teachers, and in May, ‘Careers Education andGuidance – Key Issues’, with the Society of Education Officers. A series of conferences wasorganised during the year with other bodies, such as the Independent Schools’ CareersOrganisation, to inform careers advisers, teachers and lecturers.The EngC further added to its activities to promote engineering as a career in 1990. To keepteachers, lecturers and careers’ advisers updated on promoting engineering as a career, aseries of conferences was held in partnership with organisations, including the BritishComputer Society and the Further Education Staff College.The ‘Opening Windows on Engineering’ scheme expanded during 1989. The first ‘Train theTrainers’ workshop was held at Homerton College, Cambridge, using teachers from theEastern Region Teacher Training Consortium (ERTEC) – see below. The Rt Hon MrKenneth Baker MP, Secretary of State for Education and Science (who had launched thescheme in 1986) presented certificates of recognition to ‘Window Openers’ at the EngCLondon offices and others were presented locally. The Institution of Production Engineersincluded ‘Opening Windows on Engineering’ in its Career Development Certificate scheme.All of the proposed projects with schools assumed that the schools had sufficient numbers ofappropriately qualified teachers with whom the EngC could cooperate in some way; but theEngC was concerned that this might not necessarily be the case. In fact the EngC had been© Engineering Council UK 2004