Reasons to be Cheerful
By: Nicholas Hill
CEO
18th September 2019
3 minute read
At a time when the media is particularly obsessed with gloomy speculation and bad news, it was great to hear not one but two good news stories for the UK engineering technology sector.
The first came out of the A-level and GCSE results that have been announced in recent weeks. It seems that more girls than boys (50.3%) have taken A-levels for the first time. This progress has been driven by years of campaigning by government, business, professional bodies and schools, influences like the appearance of female role models on TV and radio, and a move to a more practical-based curriculum.
Welcome News
As someone who is impatient to see an improvement in gender diversity in engineering, this is welcome news. Digging a little deeper into the numbers does reveal an important issue though, which is that the overall science numbers are propped up by high levels of girls taking A-level biology. If you look at the A-levels that lie at the core of many engineering disciplines, girls account for just 23% of physics intake and 39% of maths. The attractiveness of physics in particular, essential for so much of engineering, has a long way to go before we reach anything like gender parity.
So the A-Level figures are perhaps better news for our burgeoning bio-tech sector than a typical engineering technology employer. What is more encouraging for engineering is that the figures for GCSE entries show girls making up around 50% in all the three sciences – physics, chemistry and biology – and maths too. That’s a great result, and it will be interesting to see how this GCSE cohort’s subject choices turn out at A-level.
A Practical Effect
EngineeringUK data shows that just 12% of those working in engineering are female, with the disparity being largely due to girls dropping out of the educational pipeline at every decision point, despite generally performing better than boys in STEM subjects at school. We need to see continued, incremental forward progress, so it’s good to be able to actually see some. Gender diversity matters not just because engineering will surely be in a better place when it is less male-dominated, but also from the purely practical effect it will have on increasing overall numbers in the talent pool. As anyone running a UK company that needs to recruit professional engineers will tell you, we have been facing a desperate talent shortage for some years.
The other good news that caught my eye was record foreign investment in UK tech companies this year. £5.5bn was invested in the first seven months of the year, which equates to a greater per capita amount than for the US tech sector – wow!
The UK leads Europe in inward investment, but is probably doing particularly well just now because of the weak pound and the US-China trade war, which has made those countries less attractive to foreign investors, many of which are from Asia. This increase in investment in the tech sector is in spite of an overall reduction in UK foreign direct investment, and serves to show that the UK is still a force to be reckoned with in new technology and innovation.
Your Turn
I hope you enjoyed this brief respite from the doom and gloom stories. If you’d like another diversion before going back to your newspaper, perhaps have a think about what else your organisation could do to promote engineering as a potentially attractive career option to girls and women, particularly those making implicit career choices through the subject choices they are making at A-level and university.
At a time when the media is particularly obsessed with gloomy speculation and bad news, it was great to hear not one but two good news stories for the UK engineering technology sector.
The first came out of the A-level and GCSE results that have been announced in recent weeks. It seems that more girls than boys (50.3%) have taken A-levels for the first time. This progress has been driven by years of campaigning by government, business, professional bodies and schools, influences like the appearance of female role models on TV and radio, and a move to a more practical-based curriculum.
Welcome News
As someone who is impatient to see an improvement in gender diversity in engineering, this is welcome news. Digging a little deeper into the numbers does reveal an important issue though, which is that the overall science numbers are propped up by high levels of girls taking A-level biology. If you look at the A-levels that lie at the core of many engineering disciplines, girls account for just 23% of physics intake and 39% of maths. The attractiveness of physics in particular, essential for so much of engineering, has a long way to go before we reach anything like gender parity.
So the A-Level figures are perhaps better news for our burgeoning bio-tech sector than a typical engineering technology employer. What is more encouraging for engineering is that the figures for GCSE entries show girls making up around 50% in all the three sciences – physics, chemistry and biology – and maths too. That’s a great result, and it will be interesting to see how this GCSE cohort’s subject choices turn out at A-level.
A Practical Effect
EngineeringUK data shows that just 12% of those working in engineering are female, with the disparity being largely due to girls dropping out of the educational pipeline at every decision point, despite generally performing better than boys in STEM subjects at school. We need to see continued, incremental forward progress, so it’s good to be able to actually see some. Gender diversity matters not just because engineering will surely be in a better place when it is less male-dominated, but also from the purely practical effect it will have on increasing overall numbers in the talent pool. As anyone running a UK company that needs to recruit professional engineers will tell you, we have been facing a desperate talent shortage for some years.
The other good news that caught my eye was record foreign investment in UK tech companies this year. £5.5bn was invested in the first seven months of the year, which equates to a greater per capita amount than for the US tech sector – wow!
The UK leads Europe in inward investment, but is probably doing particularly well just now because of the weak pound and the US-China trade war, which has made those countries less attractive to foreign investors, many of which are from Asia. This increase in investment in the tech sector is in spite of an overall reduction in UK foreign direct investment, and serves to show that the UK is still a force to be reckoned with in new technology and innovation.
Your Turn
I hope you enjoyed this brief respite from the doom and gloom stories. If you’d like another diversion before going back to your newspaper, perhaps have a think about what else your organisation could do to promote engineering as a potentially attractive career option to girls and women, particularly those making implicit career choices through the subject choices they are making at A-level and university.
