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This week’s guest blog is by Peter Finegold, Head of Education, who looks at the Institution's involvement in the Year of Engineering.

Dear Member,

In my second guest blog, I would like to take a closer look at an exciting project that the IMechE has been closely involved with since its inception – the Year of Engineering.

In case you haven’t been following the Year of Engineering (YoE) in detail, it is a campaign supported by the Government which aims to inspire young people to change how they view engineering and encourage them to pursue a career in the sector.

From my point of view, the really important opportunity that the YoE offers is for the engineering sector to come together to bring about long-term, sustainable change. Certainly, the ingredients are right. Anything that brings industry, Government and the wider engineering community together to reach out to young people is a positive step.

However, the key benchmark of any campaign’s success must be its measurable and lasting impact. I am delighted that the IMechE is at the heart of projects to ensure the YoE has a sustainable, long-term legacy.

Our contribution is wide-ranging -- including involvement in policy work, the development of a new online tool to improve the evaluation of STEM projects as well as seconding a member from our communications team to the Department for Transport to work on the campaign.

One major piece of work we are contributing to and that I believe will have a profound impact on the policy legacy of YoE is the Perkins Engineering Skills Review. It is 5 years since Professor John Perkins published his initial review of engineering skills and this ‘review of the review’ will examine all the phases of education from interventions in primary and secondary education through to a renewed approach to apprenticeships and technical education – including T-Levels.

The review will be published towards the end of this year and should help ensure that engineering skills remain high on the policy agenda well beyond the Year of Engineering.

Beyond policy, we would also like another legacy to be practical improvements to the delivery of STEM engagement. The IMechE has developed an online tool which is designed to offer a quick and reliable way to evaluate STEM interventions and see which initiatives work best and why. We are delighted that this has been adopted as a YoE project.

Working alongside the Department for Transport and the IET, we have developed the tool which will now be used to measure the impact of the hundreds of STEM events that are being delivered as part of the YoE. The tool will allow us to take an objective view of which interventions work best and refine these programmes for the future.

A baby girl born today may be working until the next century. It would be arrogant to even imagine what work might look like in 2101, but I’m fairly certain that the skills developed through engineering – technical knowhow, problem solving and teamwork – will remain relevant and valued.

Increasing engineering knowledge among young people aged 5 to 19 is the main objective of the Engineering Education Grant Scheme, which we run with the IET. The Grant Scheme has been named as a YoE supporting initiative and this year’s awards focused on one of the YoE’s main themes “Engineering Improves Lives”.

Showing young people the interesting career paths engineering has to offer is also a key objective of YoE. We are supporting this through our “Meet the Engineer” profiles which feature in PE and also on our social media channels. The engineers we have featured highlight the huge depth of talent in the sector. One recent profile was of Dom Parsons who won a bronze medal for the skeleton at this year’s Winter Olympics and is also a PhD student at Bath University researching exhaust gas recirculation in gasoline engines.

The YoE is a unique opportunity for industry, Government and the wider engineering community to work together. I am confident that our efforts to ensure there will be a lasting legacy will be successful and will encourage more young people to choose engineering as their career.