Holly Broadhurst can pinpoint the moment her whole life changed to an advert playing on a car radio seven years ago.
She was a teenager growing up in Leek, a small Staffordshire town about 10 miles from Stoke-on-Trent. All her friends went to the same school. They all spoke about the same university. For Holly, Leek was the kind of place few people ever left.
Her father was an engineer-turned-baker, who started the family’s oatcake business. (Oatcakes are a big deal if you live in Staffordshire.) Her mother was a retired bank manager, and her older sister a nurse at a local hospital. Holly loved to ride her horses, first Becci and then Twrog. There was even a childhood dream of becoming a farrier.
But Holly’s grades in school steered her away from the stables. She excelled in subjects such as maths and physics, and had a sharp eye for design. From a young age, she was determined to pick a career wisely. She just wasn’t sure which one.
The radio advert she heard was for a new academy opening in nearby Rocester – the JCB Academy, a co-educational secondary school within the English University Technical College programme. The academy sounded edgy, with big companies behind it. It promised a blend of traditional studies and hands-on engineering training, with real-life exposure to the industry.
When Holly went to the open day, the school was still under construction, and joining it felt like a huge gamble. But Holly kept telling herself that a company like JCB – which is every bit as much a part of Staffordshire as oatcakes – wouldn’t be investing millions in a shaky project. It’s got to work, she told herself.
Holly took the risk. She became one of the JCB Academy’s first students, attending classes inside an ultra-modern campus that had half-swallowed an 18th-century red brick mill. As flocks of sheep grazed near the church outside, the academy’s students got busy in workshops that offered better engineering equipment than some universities.
Holly’s instinct had been right. The £22m academy not only worked, it thrived. From an initial intake of 120 students in 2010 (Holly among them), the academy now accommodates over 600 full-time pupils and nearly 300 apprentices, who are placed there by partner companies. The school brings in experts from big engineering firms to take academic concepts and drag them into the real world.
The idea, explains principal Jim Wade, is to build excitement about engineering by taking the process of learning and “turning it on its head”. Instead of teaching the fundamentals of hydraulics and then exploring the applications, the school takes children to the London Eye to witness how one of the world’s most famous tourist attractions deals with safety.
Jim Wade, principal of the JCB Academy in Rocester, Staffordshire (Credit: Jennifer Bruce)
Changing perceptions
With access to the companies behind these kinds of mega engineering projects, the children find themselves among a select few to ride the London Eye at night, as it reverses direction to perform safety tests. In Wade’s eyes, earning these kinds of bragging rights helps to bring the “cool factor” – the “big-picture thinking” – into engineering.
What the academy has struggled with from its inception is attracting girls to study engineering. Out of every 10 pupils, at least eight are boys.
“We’ve tried a hundred and one things to change perceptions, but it’s a challenge,” explains Wade. “The academy is helping to make engineering something you aspire to do. Because we exist, other schools have started doing engineering.”
The JCB Academy is not alone in this struggle. The Women’s Engineering Society estimates that only 9% of engineering professionals in the UK are female and even less are represented as apprentices. In education, says the society, the number of young women studying towards an undergraduate degree in engineering is 15%, a figure that hasn’t budged in years.
For Holly, part of the thrill of joining the academy was facing the winds of perception. It meant leaving a comfort zone and heading in a different direction.
She was 16 when she joined the academy. Two years later, she had the option of going to university (which she had been encouraged to do) but once again chose to go against the grain. She joined JCB – the company that invented the backhoe loader – as an apprentice and studied while she worked. Five years on, she is a qualified mechanical engineer, helping to design the company’s popular mini-excavator range.
In January this year, Holly experienced another life-changing moment. Beating hundreds of contenders, she won the National Higher or Degree Apprentice of the Year Award.
Her company called her a “wonderful advocate” for young people who choose to serve as apprentices. Her former academy said she has “personified what it takes to succeed as a young engineer”.
The accolade pulled into the spotlight a bright young woman who, with an infectious laugh and trendy nail polish, is dismantling engineering stereotypes.
After winning the award, Holly began doing interviews about her journey. She has spoken at over 20 school careers events, inspiring others and urging them not to dismiss engineering as a second-class career. For her, it’s right up there with medicine or law.
The next generation… Holly Broadhurst talks to students at the JCB Academy (Credit: Jennifer Bruce)
Beyond the shell
Holly also began taking part in workshops at the JCB Academy, where girls of 11 or 12 years old spend a few hours exploring engineering. Surrounded by role models outside the regular mould, the girls build model cars or discuss their hobbies, discovering that all of them rely on some form of engineering.
Holly’s message is always the same: an engineer is not “a mechanic in a dirty workshop”. She tries to illustrate how vast and interesting engineering is, and that those who choose it as a career can do just about anything, from designing an iPad to building a stage for a Broadway play. No matter where the road leads, she tells people, engineering skills are exceptionally versatile.
“If people say engineering is boring, they don’t understand it,” Holly says. “Most people see things as a shell. An engineer doesn’t. Engineers dissect. They look inside and ask how something is made, and how it works.”
She says it’s like a child’s curiosity… the “constant why?”.
“That’s the natural brain of an engineer. You stop seeing things as shells.”
Holly is considering starting a blog to continue her advocacy. If she could, she would hang a giant screen in the middle of a city to give people a glimpse inside her world. She says being a woman in engineering has not slowed her down.
“It was different 30 years ago, but now I know it to be more of a perception than what people actually live through. Time will change perceptions.”
For Holly, the main barriers to changing these perceptions lie inside schools, which she believes can do more to promote engineering. She also says careers advisers need to up their game and to be more informed about the possibilities within engineering, from medicine to space travel. And finally, Holly says, parents should push children towards engineering.
Holly Broadhurst with a toy model of a mini-excavator, the kind of JCB machine she helps design (Credit: Jennifer Bruce)
Big impact
Holly’s enthusiasm is a sparkling comet blazing across the engineering sky. But being a woman in engineering isn’t easy.
A July report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers found that over 60% of women in the profession have experienced unacceptable behaviour or comments, while 40% say they have not received equal treatment. Six out of 10 of the women surveyed believe it is easier for men to progress in their careers and almost half said their problems began before they even graduated.
The report identifies an “urgent need for a culture change in engineering companies” to stop the high number of women leaving the profession. It makes recommendations about equality in the workplace, where far too many women are put under pressure to “toughen up”.
The profession is also experiencing a serious skills shortage. So much so that the Royal Academy of Engineering is gearing up for a new PR campaign that kicks off early next year. The campaign aims to “rebrand engineering” and make it more attractive for young people.
The problems run deep and are not exclusive to engineering. From Google to the BBC, scandals swirl around women being paid less than men for doing the same work. And more than 20 employees were recently fired by taxi service Uber for sexual harassment and related issues.
Holly sees her job as a chance for “a small person to have a massive impact”. She’s at the right company, given that its founder started out in a lock-up garage in rural England and ended up creating a global empire that spans four continents and employs over 10,000 people. Holly says no two days are the same, as she and her team design ways to drive some of the most iconic machines into the future.
But the numbers suggest that there are far too few women finding these opportunities, and even fewer are reaching them through apprenticeships.
In August, JCB recruited almost 170 apprentices and graduates into its Young Talent programme. In early October, applications open for its 2018 intake. Other companies are running similar projects.
Holly can’t change an entire industry, but her story can inspire others to explore a new direction or try a different route. It serves as a reminder that life can change in just a few seconds, for those willing to take a risk.
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