There’s no doubt we’re short of engineers. Research from Engineering UK shows that we need 186,000 new engineers every year to keep up with the current demand for engineering skills.
Engineering challenges such as High Speed 2, low carbon power generation, electric and automated vehicles, production automation, Heathrow/Gatwick airport expansion and protection from flooding/sea level rise are just a small number of areas that students in design and technology could be working on in the future.
What support is out there for those trying to inspire budding engineers?
Resources, presentations and careers guides for engineering are all freely available from Tomorrow’s Engineers – a portal for anyone looking to bring more engineering into school.
This video is great for giving students a flavour of engineering. A great example of British engineering can be found here, the Bloodhound land speed record attempt – aiming to reach 1,000+mph. Check out the Bloodhound Education Resources to see some ideas of how Bloodhound can be used as engineering inspiration for the classroom.
To bring an engineer into your classroom, why not contact STEM Ambassadors to request a guest speaker to come and talk about their life as an engineer? You can also try an arrange an online guest speaker to talk to your class using skype classroom or Google Hangout.
For a cross-curricular approach to delivering engineering, the Forewind Resources have a selection of offshore wind energy ideas.
If you are looking for more engineering ideas, STEM Learning is running two days of bursary-supported CPD on 7 and 8 December 2017 - Developing an engineering curriculum in key stage 3 design and technology.