Reengineering engineering – what it looks like, how we teach it and who gets to do it
If the UK’s industrial strategy is to be successful, we need to deliver a fundamental reengineering of engineering itself.
31 March 2025
That was the headline from Future Skills: Engineering Solutions, the first in a new livestream series from FE News and City & Guilds. FE News CEO, Gavin O’Meara, and Bryony Kingsland, Head of Funding and Policy Insight at City & Guilds, set the scene.
City & Guilds’ report Making Skills Work: The Path to Solving the Productivity Crisis found that fewer than half of working-age adults feel they left education with the right skills for their careers, or that they have the skills they need now and for the future. 91% of CEOs surveyed said building workforce skills is “crucial for boosting productivity.”
In the experience of Becky Ridler, an engineer and founder of Not Just Girls, the pandemic has exacerbated the skills gap, “A lot of students I deal with struggle making eye contact. The basic skills in engineering – communication, presentation, project management – we take for granted. If kids can’t do [these] at a fundamental level, they’re never going to be able to complete the qualifications needed to upskill.”
And when it comes to upskilling, said Rhys Morgan, Engineering Director at the Royal Academy of Engineering, while policy makers enjoy buzzwords such as AI and Industry 5.0, future skills are more fundamental. “People look at the big shiny bit at the top. Actually, it’s all underpinned by fairly standard high-quality technical skills. And we’re just not creating enough of those.”
Careers advise tends to push traditional ideas of engineering as being hands on and mechanical without informing students about the wider opportunities. Topics relevant to engineering are scattered between different subjects: science, computing and D&T. “There's a real lack of understanding among teachers about what engineering is,” said Rhys. Becky agreed, teachers are “not talking about the sub-levels that go into engineering.”
The obvious fix is more involvement from employers. “Employers have the knowledge, have the resources, have the materials to go and teach it,” said Ridler. “The curriculum needs to allow space for employers to interact with students.”
“Micro-qualifications should be developed … They might only last 18 months, two years, because the technology will have moved on.” The industry needs training that addresses immediate and future challenges. Indeed, much of Becky’s degree was no longer cutting edge shortly after she began work. If micro-credentials had existed, she’d have been better equipped to evolve with the industry. “There’s a real need for the current workforce to upskill on a regular basis … with small bolt-on modular type qualifications,” she said.
Many of the current workforce will retire within the next 10 years, however, “Just 16% of the UK’s STEM workforce is made up of women and yet we have a shortage of engineers in the country,” said Bryony. “You can’t be what you can’t see” agreed Becky, girls “just assume that people like them have tried but failed.”
The numbers tell the story. Of those making GCSE choices at 14, Rhys told the panel, “Just 15,000 girls chose computer science GCSE last year – out of 300,000. So that's just 5% of girls doing one of the subjects that leads to engineering. Just 9,000 girls took A-Level physics. That's 3% of the entire female cohort.”
And at work, there is “A greater attrition of women,” highlighted Rhys, “Whether that’s because they’re not coming back after career breaks or they’re just leaving because they don’t like the culture.” Giving them a reason to stay requires collaboration.
“We need government to recognise the role of the FE sector in the skills landscape and properly invest in it,” Rhys urged. “There’s no good just saying we’ve got this industrial strategy over here and not doing anything about a skills strategy” We need deeper partnerships. Becky agrees, “If employers had a better say in what happened in the early years we wouldn’t have these skill gaps.”
Singapore is already building its productivity strategy around micro-credentials and modular learning. The UK can do the same. City & Guilds, alongside sector leaders and educators, are showing us what that might look like: faster qualifications, better guidance, stronger partnerships, inclusive practices and a clear strategy that treats skills as the cornerstone of growth.
Watch Future Skills – Engineering solutions livestream