lecture-2008-video-clips

Jamie Tuplin

"To deliver a diploma, because of the demands, and Pete will be going into more detail on this from an Engineering perspective, but because of their demanding nature, it’s very unlikely that any school or college can actually deliver the whole qualification itself. So we have to create consortia that join together different institutions bringing together the best expertise, the best facilities and ensuring that our youngsters are getting the best of the provision across the whole borough."

"Now this idea of collaboration of course, to a certain extent, is alien to people like me as a deputy head in a secondary school. Because for many years now we have been very used to being in competition with the school down the road or being in competition with the college that wants to take our potential sixth form students. That’s a real, cultural, change for people like me and many of my colleagues in schools and in colleges."

"Practitioners are telling me in all the learning lines that the learning content in the principle learning part of the diploma is more up to date, more relevant, more engaging for the youngsters and superior to the qualifications that have been very successful, very popular qualifications like our BTECs and OCR nationals. So that’s a very positive aspect."

Pete Williamson

Dilbert encounters prejudice and stereotyping because he has the ‘knack’ to be an engineer:

"When I came across this [Dilbert video] I thought it was brilliant, it’s really, really good. The reason I’m showing that is we obviously have a lot of preconceptions that we have to deal with. When we are trying to sell courses to students, when we are trying to sell courses to parents, when we are trying to sell courses to the senior leadership teams in schools, they have these preconceptions. Everything comes with baggage, and going back to the work that you [Stan Owers] did, vocational, the academic, people have perceptions of what they [engineering courses] are and we have to try and get over those things."

"When you talk to any kid, talking about engineering, their first thing is “it’s working on cars”. They don’t appreciate that it could be anything to do with aerospace, it could be chemical engineering it could be electrical engineering, a whole range – a massive, massive field of engineering. It’s trying to get that across to our students that it isn’t just working on cars. The other one is “it’s for boys”. That the big thing that we get. Our little daughter doesn’t want to do engineering because it’s just for boys isn’t it? It's like "no, please!". We do lots and lots of activities to recruit girls onto our courses and we have very, very limited success."

Mick Waters

"When I joined QCA in 2004, our Diploma team was talking about extended study as something youngsters could do to develop their personal, learning and thinking skills on something they really cared about. They were talking about teams of young people working on proper projects, like rebuilding derelict houses and building boats. There has been much debate on this issue and severe criticism of this approach, particularly as it's seen as not the type of work that can be recorded or written up or used for a thesis. Even vocational learning has to be proven by an academic process."

"We don't have enough role models in engineering or manufacturing. We need to encourage all school departments to think about the way in which they use their curriculum and how they could relate it back to manufacturing and engineering."

"For instance, when youngsters are studying a biography in English, why couldn't they choose famous engineers or manufacturers? Why can't we teach children about people like Jane Wernick, the structural engineer who designed the London Eye, or architect Norman Foster (Baron Foster of Thames Bank),and link them back to the big engineering age of British industry showing how it has evolved over time?"

"A primary school I visited a couple of weeks ago had done a huge amount of research into different facets of manufacturing. I commended them on this work and suggested they put it on their website so other children could tap into it and really explore it."

"Unfortunately a problem we have with all this is one of territory. Debates on diplomas these days seem to focus around issues such as 'is media more simple to do than engineering?' or 'is engineering easier than land use?'? But does it matter whether media is easier than engineering or whether hairdressing is harder than engineering? In the end an engineer wouldn't be your first choice to do your hair, would they?"

"There has been much made of Building Schools for the Future. I have been to schools that are being built for the future and while they have absolutely beautiful facilities, very few have real engineering facilities or real manufacturing ideas. In my previous job in a local authority I was persuading council bosses and others to build parts of schools in the airport, in the hospital, in manufacturing plants and factories. I wanted to see print workshops built in schools so that it was natural for children to see plant in schools and school in plant. I think it's wrong for our young people to go behind a big fence every day, while everybody's at work, and come out again and not realise just exactly what is going on in the real world. I want to see schools coming out into the real world and the real world welcoming them."

"And I want to encourage all those people who say 'it can’t be done' to get out of the way while those who are doing it make it happen. Often the people who are busy saying 'it can’t be done' are in the way. I think this evening we have seen people who are making it work, helping it to work. What they need is support and encouragement to solve challenges."