October 2020

| 28 | September/October 2020 www.smartmachinesandfactories.com | PRIMARY ENGINEER | Addressing the education gap O ur frustrations with the education system stemmed from it preparing pupils for exams, not work. Not only did it mean pupils were missing out on fun enriching opportunities, they didn’t know how to find or create their own opportunities. A survey by the Career Colleges Trust in August 2015 found 76% of pupils and parents felt ‘schools trained them to pass exams and get good grades rather than preparing them for work’. Lord Baker founder of the Career Colleges Trust and UTCs, at the time described how the research highlighted the extent of the problem the UK is facing with huge skills gaps across many industries. According to a findings, in May 2018, from STEM Learning, the skills shortage is costing businesses £1.5 billion a year in recruitment, additional training, temporary staffing and inflated salaries. Recent reports from the CBI and PCP Market Research show up to 9 in 10 businesses could find it difficult to hire staff with the required skills in the next 12 months. At this moment in time around half of those businesses are looking abroad to source the right skills and 7 in 10 are forced to hire candidates without a STEM background. A funder of our STATWARS competition, recently described how they recruit skilled professionals abroad, as demand for data professionals and data skills outweighs supply in the UK. They decided to become a national funder for the STATWARS® competition to be a part of the journey in informing, educating and inspiring today’s pupils and tomorrow’s professionals, so when they leave education, young people have the essential skills for the workplace, in turn reducing the skills gap. Primary Engineer’s vision is to ensure all children achieve their full potential through skills, knowledge and self-awareness. We developed a STEM by Stealth approach to education which enables children and pupils to engage with practical maths and science alongside creative problem solving and literacy. This has since developed into multiple programmes and projects which encourage and develop meta skills related to teamwork, communication, leadership, curiosity, empathy, critical thinking and resilience with multiple curriculum links to science, mathematics, computing, engineering, English and geography. We quickly found a positive impact on individual children and pupils’ self-awareness and confidence through team work, improvement in social skills through engagement with project-based learning and links to the wider world and professionals across industries. Many schools and teachers are recognising the importance of project- based learning and the need to develop essential skills to prepare pupils for the workplace, but there is a still a long way to go in embedding the development of essential skills to the heart of the educational journey. We need to do more in bridging the gap between education and industry, and this means encouraging more organisations to consider how they can partner with schools and education programmes to inspire, educate and empower pupils through engagement with their professionals and organisation as part of the curriculum. Dr Susan Scurlock MBE, CEO and founder of Primary Engineer, looks at how to address the education gap. Primary Engineer  Primary Engineer Programmes inspire children, pupils, parents and teachers through continued professional development, whole class project work, competitions and exhibitions.  All the programmes are linked to industry professionals to ensure the learning has a context to the wider world. They develop essential skills, promote engineering careers and address the diversity and gender imbalance in engineering with primary and secondary pupils. For further information visit www.primaryengineer.com