Overview
A major part of the Academy’s work is seeking to better understand and support the future skills needs of the engineering profession – from our Engineering Skills for the Future and The Universe of Engineering reports to the launch of Engineer 2030, our new flagship project to redefine the knowledge, skills and behaviours for 21st century engineers.
Literature review on engineering education and skills policy
Published: December 2023
To support the development of a workforce skills strategy that helps engineers tackle the challenges of the 21st century, the Academy commissioned a review of UK-focused skills policy over the past ten years.
This review sought to consolidate insights of effective interventions and identify key barriers over the last ten years of skills development policy across the four nations. This review was principally concerned with the training and development that takes place beyond school and tertiary education – recognising the fact that 80% of the workforce of 2030 are already in the current workforce.
The review drew upon almost 250 sources and identified a coherent set of barriers to and enablers of participation in education and training.
These were, unsurprisingly, closely related characteristics that could be enablers of, or barriers to, uptake of training and development opportunities:
- A diverse and responsive skills ecosystem
- Collaboration (including with trade unions)
- Culture of lifelong learning (inclusive)
- Financial support
- Flexible/accessible learning
- Information
- Leadership/strategic vision includes skills
- Low initial qualifications
- Low self-worth
- Not top-down/local flexibility
- Reliable/relevant qualifications
- System complexity
- Teachers/lecturers who are well-trained
- Transferable learning
The evidence examined for this review suggests several challenges and developments with which the Academy may wish to engage, summarised in four evidence-informed and practical recommendations:
- Recommendation 1: The Academy should highlight and encourage collaborations between employers, unions and skills bodies (among others) to promote participation in training and development among UK employees.
- Recommendation 2: The Academy should work with, for example, professional engineering institution (PEI) and partner organisations with local industries to identify localised approaches to skills development that, at least, show early signs of promise and that may be seen as testbeds to support the evidence base for effective interventions.
- Recommendation 3: The Academy should ensure that any new programmes it commissions or pilots that are connected to skills development are designed to yield useful evaluative information about impact over a sustained period. Equally, existing programmes may need to be re-designed to allow for better evidence of impact on primary beneficiaries – such as professionals, learners and employees – to be gathered.
- Recommendation 4: The Academy should set out a best current (or working) definition of responsible “skills” in order to support the review of existing programmes, as well as the development of new ones, to ensure there is clarity about the effectiveness and focus of interventions.
- Recommendation 5: The Academy should continue to highlight and champion the central importance of creating a more inclusive and equitable engineering profession and sector, as a key factor in attracting the widest possible range of diverse talent into engineering, which will help to address the skills shortage.