This year has been designated in the UK as ‘2018 – The Year of Engineering’. Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting the University of Kent at Canterbury to speak to a group of 3rd year Electronic Engineering Students to help prepare them for the next step in their journey into Engineering, once they have passed their degrees. My invitation came from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a professional body I am a member of. I was mindful that while I was speaking to these students that the Prime Minister was speaking to the Nation about her plans to spend a year to analyse what the Government considers is working and what is not working in Higher and Further Education. A year is a long time in education and with the resources available to the Government it seems rather pathetic that it will take such a long time to form such a view. However in the meantime whilst the students I met are working hard and the Government is getting to grips with Theresa’s latest idea, there are other matters that can be attended to. A few weeks ago in the House of Commons there was a short discussion on the year of Engineering and specifically on the gender balance of engineers in the country. Based on the student numbers I observed, in University of Kent yesterday, there are around 10% female and 90% male students heading for graduation, so we have a long way to go. This is a matter that the IET is very focused on. Although Nick Gibb on behalf of the Government did offer some responses to the questions being asked about how to improve this sort of percentage, one question that went unanswered was asked by Robert Halfon who spent a year as the Minister responsible for apprentices until Theresa May had a reshuffle after her General Election fiasco. His question was:

“As well as ensuring that careers advice encourages more women into engineering, will my right hon. Friend look at financial incentives and at how the apprenticeship levy is working to incentivise companies to employ more women in engineering?”

One of the reasons that I had been invited in to the University is that our company is an SME and although many of the graduates I met will spend time applying for roles with larger businesses, the truth is that in the South East the vast majority of all businesses including engineering businesses are SME’s. Although I can’t answer how the apprenticeship levy is working for large businesses, I can confirm Mr Halfons worst concerns that for SME’s like ours that do not pay into the apprenticeship levy, the non-levy apprenticeship scheme has not yet become a reality, even though it is nine months since Mr Halfon whilst in post promised it would. The answer from Nick Gibb was:

“My right hon. Friend is quite right. We introduced the apprenticeship levy to boost the importance of apprenticeships. We delivered more than 2 million apprenticeship starts in the last Parliament and are committed to 3 million apprenticeship starts in this Parliament, because this is a Government who are committed to high-quality skills in our economy. The apprenticeship programme is part and parcel of that ambition.”

So at least we now know what the Government has as its ambition. Perhaps the next step will be a renewal of its plan that so far has failed to materialise!