Dick Evans discusses the importance of colleges of further and higher education in maintaining the quality of the UK’s engineering workforce. It’s all been said before, but here is my version. Many of my statements will be massively generalised and simplistic but they are made to provoke debate and discussion. Numerous reports over many decades have attempted to tackle the ineffective state of education and training and our track-record in this area compared with our major competitors. The majority of these reports focus on particular stages of education and training, e.g. secondary, technical and higher education. Very few attempted to
Browsing 25 Articles Filed under: “Skills Engineering & Manufacturing”
THE FUTURE OF PHYSICS
This paper was sent to the Editor by Dr Richard Evans, Principal of Stockport College of Further and Higher Education. He addressed the Foundation on the subject “Post-Sixteen Education – Supplying the Needs of Engineering in Britain” on 9 October 1991, when other speakers were Professor Ian Nussey and Dr Derek Roberts. Dr Richard Evans Summary by the editor: In a provocative article, Dr Evans posed a number of questions to which answers were needed in order to develop an overall, coherent, long-term strategic policy for physics education and the part that higher education institutions must play. Among other topics,
Don’t Catch the Drift
Colleges must not sacrifice their Further Education (FE) work in an effort to make themselves like universities, says Dick Evans Suddenly, politicians are talking about the dangers of academic drift and the shift from vocationalism without realising their policies are driving these trends, Do they really understand the meaning of these terms and, more importantly, the dangers that they will bring? First, consider “academic drift”. Following the announcement that the Government wants one in three young people in higher education by the year 2000, many further education colleges felt they should play their part in realising this target. No real
Further and Vocational Education
In Further and Higher Education there are major concerns about recruitment, retention, achievement and ultimate destination of students studying engineering and technology. Colleges and universities continue to experience difficulties in realising their student target numbers and there are concerns about the quality of the students being accepted onto the programmes of study at all levels within the two sectors. Skills/competence/knowledge/understanding gaps are now manifest across the spectrum of employment, whether it be at craft, technician or professional level. One major difficulty the FE colleges experience is obtaining valid, reliable and up-to-date statistical information about the students studying engineering across the
POST-16 EDUCATION –SATISFYING THE NEEDS OF ENGINEERING IN BRITAIN
The Foundation held a Lecture and Dinner Discussion on the subject “Post-16 Education: Supplying the Needs of Engineering in Britain” at the Royal Society on 9 October 1991. Lord Butterworth CBE chaired the evening and the speakers were Professor Ian Nussey OBE FEng, IBM United Kingdom Limited; Dr Dick Evans, Principal, Stockport College of Further Education; and Dr Derek Roberts CBE FEng FRS, Provost, University College, London. Summary: Both speakers examined the present state of engineering education, its good and bad features, and made proposals which, they believed, would enhance Britain’s ability to meet the challenges that faced the country.