HEALTHCARE ESTATES 2024 KEYNOTES Dr Leevers added: “We work with over 300
organisations with an interest in increasing the number of young people on these pathways who are doing outreach or other activities to support this themselves, to take what used to be a very fragmented, and slightly competitive, area of work, and enable people to collaborate swiftly. This is a really important aspect of our activity, alongside our own activities to reach young people.” The EngineeringUK speaker said one of the
The EngineeringUK CEO said demand for engineers was ‘soaring’ – with up to 725,000 jobs needed by 2030 to support the drive to Net Zero.
While a number were expected to emerge, Dr
Leevers said, ‘the only two we know about’ are for Engineering and IT and Telecommunications. She said: “I think this will all be happening within the next nine months. We would expect an output from that, but they will be drawing on insights from the Industrial Strategy Council, the Department for Work & Pensions, the Labour Market Advisory Board, and from Skills England – a new Department for Education body that is absorbing the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. We also have 15-20 different Skills Task Forces across government departments all feeding in.” Dr Leevers hoped ‘something really positive’ would result – including ‘looping in the devolved nations’, and thinking about the graduate and ‘more technical’ pathways to create these workforce plans. She felt this was ‘a really great opportunity’ for organisations like EngineeringUK and IHEEM to ‘get involved and have their voices heard’. Next explaining ‘what EngineeringUK does to contribute to growing the workforce’, she said: “We aim to enable, inspire, and inform more young people from all backgrounds to choose engineering and technology careers and, like IHEEM, have a special emphasis on careers that will enable us to achieve Net Zero and improve sustainability.”
Research into workforce needs The speaker said EngineeringUK also ‘does a lot of work around the wider workforce’, but that its activities ‘tend to focus on young people’. She explained: “We do a lot of research into workforce needs, and the workforce’s current composition.” Earlier in the year, Engineering UK had highlighted some of the challenges around diversity. Of the current overall engineering footprint, women make up just 15.7% of the workforce, with a number of minority groups also underrepresented. Dr Leevers explained: “So, we not only create all this data, but also look at the numbers of young people on pathways in (to engineering) to see how we’re progressing, and where the risks are, and evaluate activities to see which interventions can make a real difference here.” All this information is drawn from insights from across the
membership. “Just last week,” Dr Leevers explained, “we published a report on STEM careers education, using it as an opportunity to make recommendations at a time when there’s considerable thought about education policy. Last year, we produced a report with Lord Willetts and Lord Knight on how to increase the numbers of young people on Level 2 and Level 3 apprenticeships. That is where most of the last decade’s decline in apprenticeships has been.”
38 Health Estate Journal January 2025
organisation’s ‘collaborative vehicles’ was neon – a platform for teachers to find the activities that best meet their needs, which can search effectively by geography, but also by age, content, and such like. Organisations providing such outreach activities can list them free of charge, while neon is also free for schools to use. Hilary Leevers said Engineering UK also hosted ‘a huge amount’ of careers resources and case studies of career stories on the platform. She said: “We also have the Tomorrow’s Engineers Code,” (described as ‘a community of more than 300 like-minded organisations committed to increasing the number and diversity of young people entering engineering and technology careers, by designing, delivering, supporting, or funding, STEM outreach activities’).
Pledging their commitment The speaker explained: “The organisations involved pledge to work together to improve the collective impact of all our endeavours, and we support members of the Code – again free to join – through webinars and resources, and help them network. We might, for example, have webinars on how to target new activities more effectively – so it’s about reaching the groups less likely to have gone into engineering and technology, and talking about environmental sustainability in a way that doesn’t alarm children. We know that climate change is very worrying, so must frame the associated career opportunities young engineers have so they feel empowered and more positive. We take anyone at any point on that journey. You could even just be thinking about increasing your involvement in working with young people, and we’d welcome you as a signatory.” EngineeringUK also has a new ‘schools-facing’ brand,
‘EUK Education’. Hilary Leevers’ next slide showed some of the events which reflect the type of activities and work EngineeringUK wishes to do with school-age children – such as the Tomorrow’s Engineers Week, its Climate Schools programme, and the now well-established The Big Bang (science) Fair. She said: “Our focus is on 11-14-year-olds – a key age group, but we support people working across all ages.” Last year, through these various initiatives, EngineeringUK had worked with over 120,000 young people – a number the speaker said it planned to increase in the coming year. Dr Leevers told delegates: “I want to say a bit about our Big Bang programme, and its three components – the first being the Big Bang national competition, where we identify the UK young scientist, engineer, and technologist of the year, and the students undertake really practical hands-on activities. This is very important – because they have gone through a period of quantifiable decline in practical work at schools.” Those keen to participate can get involved by being a judge, or volunteering to support local schools by telling them about the competition, while the second ‘component’ is the Big Bang Fair, attended by 20,000 young people over three days, ‘with amazing STEM interactive exhibitors, and a real opportunity for attendees to talk one to one with apprentices or recent graduates who they can really relate to’. Hilary Leevers said: “We target very carefully young
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