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Is an Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway to Chartered Engineer - a historical anachronism or the future?

Roy Bowdler
This is National Apprenticeship Week.  

 

An unintended and unfortunate consequence of UK government policies and wider economic changes in the 1980s and 1990s was a very substantial decline in apprenticeships which had served previous generations so well.  They didn’t die completely because employers (like the company that I was Training Manager of) understood their value, not just for skilled craft trades, but also as an alternative option to “Graduate Training Schemes” for Engineers and Managers, traditionally leading to HNC type qualifications, but from the mid-2000s increasingly degrees. Initiative was eventually picked up by Government, turning it into a “flagship” policy.  This has had an effect, but policy is not implementation and typically the brewery visit has not been well organised (with apologies to those unfamiliar with British vulgar slang). However, changes like this can take years if not decades to “bed in”, so I hope that we will keep trying.

 

Engineering Council has always been dominated by the academic perspective and relatively poorly connected with employers, therefore it has associated Apprenticeships with Technicians and not with Chartered Engineers, although it accepted that it was possible "exceptionally via bridges and ladders” for a Technician to develop into a Chartered Engineer. Incorporated (formerly Technician) Engineer was also drawn from the Apprenticeship tradition. However, once the qualification benchmark was adjusted to bachelors level, it was also intended to become the “mainstream” category for graduates, with CEng being “premium” or “elite”.  Unfortunately the Incorporated category has not been successful and its international equivalent “Technologist” defined as it is by degree content (i.e. less calculus than an “engineer”) also seems equally poorly regarded or even legally restricted in other countries.

 

Now we have Degree Apprentices coming through, the profession has responded by offering Incorporated Engineer recognition at an early career stage. This should in principal be a good thing and I have advocated it in the past. However, I am seriously concerned that this may also stigmatise them as a “second class” form of professional, as has been the tradition to date.

 

Over the last few years Engineering Council has adopted a policy encouraging younger engineers to consider the Incorporated Engineer category as a “stepping stone” to Chartered Engineer. Some professional institutions have promoted this often with a particular focus on those “without the right degree for CEng” with some success. However the approach “kicks the can down the road” to the question of how they should subsequently transfer to CEng.  There are potentially likely to be some frustrated, disillusioned and even angry engineers, if they find that “progression” is blocked and that they are stuck on a “stepping stone”.  We don’t need more unnecessary “enemies” amongst them, we have created enough already. 

 

A further problem is that those with accredited degrees do not expect to require a “stepping stone” and consider IEng to have no value for them or even perhaps at worst insulting. Many employers of Chartered Engineers and the professional institutions are steeped in the tradition of recruiting those with accredited degrees and developing them to Chartered Engineer in around 3-5 years. Other graduate recruiters may be less academically selective, but share similar traditions and expectations.

 

Is therefore a Degree Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway compared to a CEng accredited (BEng or MEng) full-time undergraduate degree course?  Is performance and current capability (aka “competence”) the appropriate frame of reference for comparison, or should those from each pathway be separated academically and considered to be different “types”, or on “fast” and slow tracks”?

 

As Degree Apprenticeships develop further, there will be those who gain CEng accredited degrees and have work experience via an “even faster track”. My concern is that those graduates from Degree Apprenticeships who are more competent and productive than their age group peers from full-time degree programmes, but disadvantaged in academic recognition terms, may find themselves in a seemingly unfair and anomalous situation.  

 

In addition, those employers who primarily “exploit existing technology” may continue to feel that the Engineering Council proposition is contrary to their interests and discourage engagement. Employers who invest in apprenticeships state that they experience greater loyalty from former apprentices, relative to graduate trainees and often a better return on investment.  Whereas the professional institution proposition emphasises different priorities, which may align quite well with Research & Development or Consultancy type business models, but not with Operations and Maintenance or Contracting. My experience as an employer trying to encourage professional engagement was that the Professional Institution concerned advised employees informally to “move on if you want to become Chartered”, because they valued Project Engineering less than Design Engineering. As for management, this was definitely “chartered engineering” if you held the right type of engineering degree and valued if it was “prestigious”. If you didn’t hold the right type of engineering degree and weren’t “highly prestigious” then it wasn't valued much.

 

If Degree Apprenticeships become more strongly established, do we want to accept them as an equally valid pathway to a range of excellent careers including Chartered Engineer, or do we wish to continue our long-standing policy of treating them as useful but second or third class pathways? Will weasel words of platitude be offered ,whilst existing attitudes and practice are allowed to prevail?    


If the answer is we that want to give apprentices equal value, then in the current climate of retribution, should those who have enthusiastically encouraged the stigma and snobbery against them consider falling on their swords? Enthusiasm for excellence in engineering, especially in stretching academic circumstances is a virtue not a crime and I strongly support it. Unfortunately however many around the Engineering Council family, perhaps motivated by a neediness for “status”, seem to have been mainly concerned with rationing access to the Chartered category by other “graduate level” practitioners, and disparaging those drawn from the apprenticeship tradition. 

 

Further Reading

 
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a-new-apprenticeship-programme-kicks-off-national-apprenticeship-week-2018

 
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-will-end-outdated-snobbery-towards-apprenticeships

 
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/further-education/12193128/Theres-been-an-apprenticeship-stigma-for-far-too-long.html

 
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/theres-still-a-stigma-around-apprenticeships-people-look-down-on-you-3622353-Oct2017/

 
https://www.fenews.co.uk/featured-article/14816-overcoming-the-apprenticeships-stigma-not-before-time

 
https://www.bcselectrics.co.uk/news/pushing-back-against-stigma-apprenticeships

 
‘Stigma against apprenticeships must end,’ says Network Rail boss. Mark Carne, Network’s Rail’s chief executive (Rail Technology News)

   
https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/national-apprenticeship-week-young-women-stem-apprenticeship-a3781606.html

 
http://www.aston.ac.uk/news/releases/2017/july/uks-first-degree-apprentices-graduate/

 
https://www.stem.org.uk/news-and-views/opinions/apprenticeships-better-skills-better-careers          

 
http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/blog/Pages/Why-I-chose-the-degree-apprenticeship-route.aspx               

 

 

 

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    Someone was kind enough to point me in the direction of an article by Prof Elena Rodriguez-Falcon who is an IET Fellow, although I haven’t met her.  She is promoting her institution NMiTE which has been highlighted in an earlier thread. I hold no brief for that, or the journal in which the article was published.  However, she also describes some of the “fresh thinking” that I think is needed and I wish her success.

    our MEng in integrated engineering will be taught not in four but three years, 46 weeks a year, during which time our engineers in training will be learning by solving real challenges from partner employers 100 per cent of their time. So, with hands-on learning, we will have no lectures. Absolutely none! There are no set textbooks either.    

    Our learners will not sit traditional exams. They will instead demonstrate their competencies and skills by addressing challenges from engineering and manufacturing companies.

    We are also slaying perhaps the most sacred of cows in UK engineering; we will not require our learners to have maths and physics A-level.

    A recent prominent article about NMiTE in The Times highlighted many of the underlying problems: a deeply conservative profession stuck in the past coupled with a public perception that professional engineers with degrees and masters don blue overalls, hard hats and man production lines…. Readers… will know the damage that is done when negative stereotypes are perpetuated. Teenagers and their parents see engineering as male, manual and dirty. The reality is that engineers, like other professionals, whether accountants, lawyers, or journalists, spend most of their time at desks or in meetings solving big challenges and earning high salaries!

    Note; I agree that engineering isn’t just, or even mainly, about the wearing of overalls, hard hats and supposedly male attributes.  I also agree that the work of many engineers can be compared equally with other professions, considered by some to have “higher status”.  I can also empathise with those who move primarily in circles where “status” is important, either socially or professionally such as in academia. After all for a senior academic, “status” is the equivalent of productivity and financial performance for a company manager or SME owner.


    Unfortunately however, these type of arguments have contributed towards academic and social class based snobbery, frequently directed towards apprentices and those from that pathway. At worst apprentices are negatively stereotyped as undereducated wielders of oily rags, or cloth cap Ronnie Corbett figures who should know their place, at the bottom of the social pile. Whether highly educated and high status engineers such as university professors like it or not, skilled and more practically oriented professionals are an equally valuable part of the practice of engineering.


    Teenagers and parents who identify role models like senior managers in major companies, successful self-employed specialists or SME principals drawn from the apprenticeship tradition may have a different perspective. An “ideal market” rewards productivity rather than status, so there are many examples of higher earnings for practical delivery, rather than “conceptual thinking” at desks and discussions in “meetings”.  The public perception of “engineers” and “engineering careers” will not be improved by “different tribes”, within it seeking higher status at the expense of others.  We don’t need negative stereotyping of any kind and should reserve our distain only for the unethical.

    The bigger issue was highlighted by the huge number of comments attracted by the article, over 100 comments last time I looked, largely from people purporting to be engineers. I do hope pupils and parents don’t see them as I can’t think of a better way of putting people off engineering than reading these misogynistic and old-fashioned views. What had set off the ire of this phalanx of crusty engineers and led to such an outpouring of disdain? It was the very idea that maths and physics A-level won’t be compulsory to get a place at NMiTE! For us, the dogmatic insistence on A-level maths and physics is at the heart of the problem with attracting enough people into engineering. But can it be done without dumbing down the profession? Quite frankly the outpouring showed it is dumbed down already.

    https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/skills/2018/07/introducing-engineering-course-without-level-maths

    https://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/ns_spotlight_engineering_supplement_july_2018.pdf


    I find it interesting to compare Prof Rodriguez-Falcon’s plan, with the “degree apprenticeship” model developed by my Further Education College and University partners and I (as an employer’s training manager) about 15 years ago, later adapted as a basis for some currently approved degree apprenticeships.  I wonder what the attitude of Engineering Council Accreditors and PEIs will be , given “the ire of this phalanx of crusty engineers offering such an outpouring of disdain”?  I wonder what her reaction would be to IEng accreditation for the degree, which would be their traditional response?  With tut-tutting, patronising and superior attitudes thrown in!  I presume that she will employ an alternative mechanism, to select only the most “able” prospective students in lieu of top A level grades in maths and science?  If whatever that mechanism is produces excellence, then I would wish to offer my encouragement and support, but she may need to continue to be brave in the face of opposition and make good use of influential friends.              


    I await with further interest the proceedings of this upcoming conference  https://epc.ac.uk/events/new-approaches-to-engineering-higher-education-conference/ .  I also hope that our Engineering Council accepts that fresh thinking is needed. If they haven’t already, they also need to rebalance the perspectives of employers and other stakeholders, not just engineer’s clubs, university professors and a wider “establishment” who have dominated the dialogue to date.  It seems a bit rich to me that some academics criticise apprenticeships for narrow specialisation, or offering only limiting skills without adaptable knowledge, while schools and universities run an “exam factory competition”  designed to place people into silos of “the best” (potential CEng) and “the rest” as teenagers. Engineering for most practitioners involves life-long learning and if we are going to take a “fix” at the age of around the age of 22, someone with a good apprenticeship including a higher qualification, will typically on average be more effective and productive in most engineering roles.  


    We need a system that encourages young people to seek technical careers, then to grow that career by optimising and where necessary updating their capability to satisfy the market’s needs. This has to be a balance between their abilities, personal attributes and evolving circumstances. If we narrow the range of people on that journey, intentionally or otherwise, by gender, social class, age, or other means, then we lower our national competitiveness.  Over the last twenty years, higher education has increasingly come to rely on overseas students and the need for good “mainstream” engineers and technicians, has lacked “home grown” talent through the loss of apprenticeships. In principle, I’m very supportive of our universities, especially so as they have become essential engines for the local economy in many parts of the country.  However, having become so dominant , partly at the cost of the polytechnic model and of further education, something needs to rebalance.


    How technical knowledge and skills are acquired and recognised is an important part of any discussion around “new approaches”.  My challenge to academic friends is; that having achieved a dominant position, please ensure that you deliver effectively for all those capable of achieving in engineering, especially including those in employment, who are not preoccupied with the “competition” that has become the education system.  I agree in part with Prof Rodriguez-Falcon, because there are certainly influential “dog in the manger” activists in our PEI community who will resist change, including some academics.


    We have de-facto 50% of young people achieving “graduate status”. Are Technicians and Engineers somehow “less bright” than average?  Are knowledge and skills acquired in a vocational context of less value, than academic concepts?  How many experienced practitioners are actually of graduate and post-graduate calibre, but under-recognised? Some reasonable stakeholders in our profession suggest that vice-versa applies and have low confidence in academic recognition as an indicator of productive capability. There is good evidence that many of a previous generation from the (“HNC type”) apprenticeship tradition, performed and continue to perform at least as well as most more recent MEng graduates.  I should also note that these apprentices were paid from the age of 16-18, not indebted by many tens of thousands of pounds by the age of 21-22 and looking for a job.  


    For the avoidance of doubt here, I’m not attacking MEng courses, or any form of academic excellence. Perhaps many of these should also be an apprenticeship, ideally one accessible to those “progressing” as engineers, not just “the cream” of 18 year old academic achievement?   I’m also not arguing “apprenticeship good - degree bad”.  There have been and continue to be, some pretty poor excuses for the type of “apprenticeship” that is needed to set someone on to a potential Chartered Engineer pathway or even for that matter to become a competent Engineering Technician.  Some examples of excellence can also be found here https://worldskills.org/  and I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the recently retiring president  https://worldskills.org/media/news/fond-farewells-and-appreciation-outgoing-worldskills-president-simon-bartley/  An electrical contracting businessman by background, who also led UK Skills before it was abolished, in the “bonfire of the quangos” and with it this also https://www.nationaltrainingawards.com/. I was a volunteer judge for what its worth. 


    Are we destined to be forever stuck in the tired and outdated divide between academic (“superior status”) and vocational (“inferior status”) in engineering and technology?  


  • 0
    Call me cynical, but isn't that just a 3 year unpaid internship, with a bit of paper at the end saying you now have an MEng?
  • 0
    Not unpaid Simon!


    You have to pay, or borrow and pay back plus interest, or borrow and don't pay back, so that the taxpayer picks up the tab, typically around £40000 for an MEng. It is possible to be offered the opportunity at the age of 18 having been in publicly funded education, but given the competitive nature of the education system, many parents who can afford to, choose to pay in the hope of opening the door to the "very best opportunities". For example, at a school near me its £21.950 per annum plus extras from year 3 onwards. 


    As an employer of degree apprentices we paid tuition fees and a reasonable salary, but I must note that when those fees were trebled from £1000 to £3000 it blew a massive hole in my ROI evaluation and annual budget.  Perhaps the low fees were subsidised from public funds and moving some of that money into employer apprenticeship funding gives employers more "customer power", only time will tell the results of that.              
  • 0
    IET 2019 skills survey

    https://www.theiet.org/impact-society/factfiles/education-factfiles/iet-skills-survey/iet-skills-survey-2019/


    “The biggest problem raised by 73% of companies is having candidates with academic knowledge but inadequate workplace skills.”

  • 0
    Interesting, however the report only contains two case studies, one of which features the CEO of a quantity surveying business which employs exclusively chartered quantity surveyors in technical roles. I'm not sure if the authors of the report understand the subject matter and so one has to suspect the overall veracity of the findings.
  • 0
    However, anecdotally, and from any of us who have experience of graduate recruitment, this figure is no surprise at all. Degrees, A levels, and GCSEs are and were never intended to produce "workplace ready" staff. And in my experience it's been to the huge frustration of both employers and of academics that government on the one hand, and students (and their parents) on the other, thought they were.


    I think the tide is now changing, as apprenticeships (with or without a degree) are gently creeping back. But in the UK we still have the fundamental problem of not enough employers with the funds, size, and willingness to support apprenticeships or mid-degree placements. The ball's in our court - but I'm not sure what we can do with it. We COULD (shock, horror, whisper it quietly) look to see what other countries do, to see whether they have effective development regimes for engineers and, if so, how they work. Wouldn't that be a fantastically good thing for the IET to spend it's money on, and surely must be within it's charitable remit?


    Thanks,


    Andy
  • 0
    Peter, 


    Thanks for the opportunity to explore this. I haven’t in any way been associated with this survey. 


    In my previous job, I developed and operated a training programme (degree apprenticeship) for Mechanical and Electrical Building Services Engineers and Commercial, including M&E Quantity Surveyors, but also potentially technically informed commercial roles like “estimating” and “procurement”.  The design was such that firstly everyone completed an ONC in Building Services Engineering , the primary learning method was “simulated projects” based on real architect's designs.  As the programme progressed, the two streams began to diverge with one focussed more on construction management , such as legal and financial aspects and the other more in-depth engineering. However, the team and project based approach continued to bachelors (Hons) degree standard over 4 years in total.


    Naturally, once professional bodies get interested, their priority is to place people into silos - “one of yours, one of mine”.  RICS was always snooty about “construction management” and CIBSE was snooty about “project engineering”. So the reality was that, although these people developed great careers and some are now Director level managers, only those who migrated into places where chartership was highly valued, pursued that avenue. As things have evolved subsequently, the commercial stream would be better placed for Chartered Building Engineer and the Engineers would be seen as IEng, although most were more than a match for typical MEng graduates.


    So as I see it, the practice of Engineering and Technology is crowded with different tribes and sects, some with an almost priestly cabal, seeking “purity” and sectarianism. As a rational employer, you seek to align with what supports your business model and avoid that which doesn’t.  There are many people with CEng who are doing something pretty similar or at least analogous to Quantity Surveying and I don’t think that the IET taking a broad view of Engineering & Technology in practice is a problem.  

         

  • 0
    Andy,


    This is “one I started earlier”    ? , but also addresses the issues you highlight.  It is rare that we don’t have common ground, because we share the similar fundamental aims, as I hope do most IET members, in terms of looking to the future.   


    The article below comes from a different perspective to my proposition, by focusing on developing what we might see as “advanced technicians”.  

    https://feweek.co.uk/2019/11/10/vocational-progression-must-be-treated-like-more-academic-options/


    Coming from an educational perspective, the writer uses qualification “levels” as a frame of reference. I should note that this frame of reference in effect simply counts years in education, so a full-time bachelors undergraduate university student, moves from level 3 to level 6 over three years, passing though levels 4&5 without even noticing. Therefore using this frame of reference, someone following the academic pathway starts on leaving school as “equal” to a craft based technician, passing swiftly through the “equivalent” of advanced technician and even the minimum academic benchmark for Incorporated Engineer, usually without gaining any meaningful vocational capability en-route.  


    The writer states; “Those taking level 4/5 qualifications are more similar socio-economically to those taking a bachelor’s degree at a non-Russell Group university than they are to level 3 students.”  and “England is unusual in having such a tiny proportion of young people with an intermediate, level 4 or 5 qualification, despite high demand from employers and substantial salary returns.”


    A level 4/5 qualification would be understood by most of us as HNC/HND. These were a traditional pathway for many apprenticeships that created “engineers”. They were “squeezed out” by some of the factors that you highlight, such as; the loss of major industries, fragmentation of formerly large employers and the growth of degree opportunities. Those that did survive, became increasingly “looked down upon” by those with levels 6&7 qualifications, described as “higher”, but in practice simply a matter of spending an additional couple of years in full-time education.  Work experience or vocational training counts for nothing in this “academic” frame of reference.


    If I accept the writer’s assertions as reasonable for the sake of argument, I could interpret them as; “more skilled people are generally as successful as the more educated”. If we actually valued and compared their relative “capability”, we would find that it is substantially similar, overlapping and broadly of "graduate standard".


    I don’t think that we can “put the genie back in the bottle”.  The momentum that has taken us to a circa 50% graduate younger population is too great and the costs of trying to unravel this too high.  I also think that graduate standard, should be our engineering community’s benchmark for recognition as “an Engineer”, as essentially it already is. However, in practice there are now many graduate technicians and there always have been many “non-graduate” engineers, often of post-graduate capability, but without that capability being recognised in an academic context.  


    Unfortunately, to the extent that Engineering Council exercises leadership of the family of professional institutions, it has adopted a “top-down” perspective, primarily concerned with elite status and adopting the academic perspective of “higher and lower”. In particular by defenestrating the principle that it had evolved, of the three types of professional that it codified being “different but equally valuable”. This principle was unfortunately resented by those primarily concerned with relative status, who cite “standards”, but in practice are often motivated by snobbery and “nothing special” themselves.  Adding to the mix is the need to align with international accords (of academics) and the naturally convenient advantages of using university qualifications as a measure. Clearly this has left us with a problem.  Suggestions welcome to resolve it!              


  • 0
    https://feweek.co.uk/2019/11/25/my-5-priorities-for-fe-that-should-go-first-in-the-next-education-secretarys-in-tray/


    I don't know anything about Prof Ewart Keep's political opinions or allegiances, if any.


    To "blame" Professional Engineering Institutions for the strategic failures that he outlines, would also be unfair. Is it fair to suggest that the leadership of our profession has been largely disinterested in vocational skills, but instead preoccupied with the relative academic and social status of different types of competent practitioners of engineering and technology? 


    I didn't start this argument to praise the IET, but I am pleased to see that it has sought to listen to employers, encouraged fresh thinking and championed work experience and work relevance for those in early career.  I hope that means that our influence will drag, if necessary kicking and screaming, those within our profession who seem stuck in outdated snobbery, belatedly into the 21st century.  Unfortunately some younger Engineers have also been seduced by ideas of academic superiority and entitlement, that have been so prevalent.  We should all support excellence and encourage those with great minds to apply them to engineering, but we have failed to adequately respect the contribution of those in the "mainstream". So many excellent engineers and technicians, often of graduate calibre haven't found us respectful or relevant.


    Professor Keep's critique of employer investment, is a fair one, in my experience, but many modern employers have limited scope to carry the overheads as others have observed here. Speaking as a former employer's training manager it was a constant battle to resist "poaching" by competitor employers who hadn't made that same investment. Some employers are dominant in their "territory" and at lower risk of losing graduating apprentices or graduate trainees, but if demand exceeds supply in the market place for talent, as it often has in technical roles over recent times, your investment is "lost".                                



     



     




                
  • 0
    I intend to make this my last response to myself, as I appreciate that this “discussion” has become something of a monologue.  Hopefully the argument has moved forward and there isn’t much more that I can add.  


    When I started this forum, my experience was that many Chartered Engineers and HR professionals, didn’t understand that there were apprenticeships that included degrees. Perhaps more importantly, long-established cultural values assuming academic learning to be of “higher status” than vocational had strengthened, such that negative prejudice towards apprenticeships had become endemic.  In many respects, Engineering and Technology , should have been one of the last places for such negative prejudices to take root and flourish, especially in the workplace, but they clearly have. 


    The issues involved are complex and mainly sociological.  I have argued that a significant cause within the community of professional engineering institutions has been a “neediness” for status. This certainly isn’t unique to engineering and technology, the growth in the number of professions offering “Chartered status” illustrates that.  I’m Chartered through CIPD and have had some experience with quite a wide range of other professions. What many of them seem to lack is a “dog in the manger” or “snobbish” attitude towards others in their own field.  


    A potential factor seems to me, the way that engineering has been divided and “siloed” at such an early age on academic grounds.  We could get away with that, when only a small minority of people gained a university education. But the assumption that someone who got superior academic results as a teenager and became a full-time student is “better” than someone with more moderate teenage academic achievement, who combined workplace and academic learning, especially to “level 4” and beyond, is actually quite dubious.  It is partly for that reason that I support “progression”, but when Engineering Council, decided that they did too; instead of creating a genuinely progressive system for engineers, they set about downgrading those who were Incorporated, defenestrating their carefully created “different but equally valuable” proposition and destroying the value of those engineering degrees with a “more practical” orientation.  I hope that the lessons may have been learned, but it can take decades to “turn the ship”.


    I have a copy of SARTOR 1990 where the introduction places an emphasis on “relevance to real work” and “integration of theory and practice”. However it also emphasised a 1-2-3 process of “education”, “training” and “experience”. If you didn’t “tick the number 1 box” at university or via notoriously tricky examinations, then the only option was to hope that your career had taken off enough, to be invited if you were aged over 35, to write a technical treatise.  I didn’t pick up the word “apprenticeship” and perhaps some negative connotations were already growing by 1990, with politicians looking to appropriate that “brand” for short youth training programmes, not comprehensive 4-5 year training schemes with good qualifications and off the job training.   


    These three stories give a current perspective

    https://feweek.co.uk/2019/11/30/employers-must-be-at-the-heart-of-the-vocational-education-system/


    The “The Institute of Student Employers” used to be  “The Association of Graduate Recruiters”  adopting its current name in  2017. At the time they said “The change to the ISE reflects that the majority of its employer members take a broader approach to how they recruit and develop emerging talent, hiring school leavers, apprentices and interns alongside graduates.”  I have never had any affiliation with it, but as an employer’s training manager for many years, I felt that in its previous form, it tended to reinforce the assumption that a “professional” must first become a full-time university student. This inevitably contributed, even if not intentionally towards negative and “snobbish” attitudes towards apprenticeships. Many of the younger generation of HR professionals in organisations with engineers, who affiliated to AGR  were themselves recruited as graduates with little understanding of the apprenticeship concept.

    https://feweek.co.uk/2019/12/01/perceptions-of-engineering-hold-the-sector-back/


    On the whole I support this,  but I would have preferred that  “highlights the different levels of jobs available, with apprentice and technician levels alongside professional occupations.”   Had been worded a little differently, this may of course be the editor rather than Rhys Morgan. The first use of “level” could read “types” the second “roles”.  The phrase “professional occupation” is also the subject of a variety of definitions. It may be that Dr Morgan’s intent here, is for “Professional” to mean “Chartered”? Other members of “The Engineering Establishment” have in the past promoted the idea of an “Associate Professional” and there are many areas of professional institution influence, where anyone who isn’t Chartered or who didn’t go to the right university will find negative prejudice.   


    Why are we so interested in “levels” and what do we actually mean when we refer to people as being at a higher and lower “level”? More highly educated? More experienced? Trusted with greater risk? Of higher social rank or status? The Cleese, Barker, Corbett sketch?  Our own Engineering Council recognised the problem 20+ years ago and evolved a policy that its registrants were “different but equally valuable”, only to throw it out of the window as soon as the IIE wasn’t there to defend it.


    I have never liked “political correctness” or supported those who chose to take offence and claim to have been slighted for trivial reasons. Anyone who has spent time in the Military, or in Yorkshire or in any form of heavy industry for that matter, should understand, that it can be counterproductive. Nevertheless, we have over recent decades largely educated people to desist from disrespectful attitudes in the workplace, towards those of a different gender, race or other personal characteristics.  I agree that the image of “engineers” as wearers of hard hats or as wielders of oily rags (a metaphor probably created by our own “leaders”) is limiting and may deter many, disproportionately so females. However, the obsession with stratification within the profession has been to support widespread negative stereotyping of those from the apprenticeship tradition as “lower level cloth cap working class types” and visit snobbery upon them.  The effect has therefore been to replace some forms of “ignorance” or “entitlement” with another. 


    For the record in case anyone hasn’t read my previous comments, I support the idea that our (IET) definition of a Professional Engineer, should be someone who illustrates a graduate standard (I nearly said “level”) of knowledge and understanding, with proven competence through exercising significant personal responsibility. Part of the role of a Technician is to be skilled and take responsibility and act within their competence. An apprentice or trainee of any type has a similar obligation but under suitable overall supervision. Anyone who has chosen to accept the IET and/or Engineering Council code of contact, should have the right to equal respect. Employers, professional bodies and others need to evaluate the capability of practitioners in various ways, but the “trickle down” approach of rationing out relative status, doesn’t achieve that very well , because most of those deemed to be “lower level” simply don’t want to partcipate in something which tends to diminish them.

    https://feweek.co.uk/2019/12/03/forces-for-good-ex-military-impress-as-trainee-lecturers/


    I like this and note that Armed Forces training schools offer an example of the type of training infrastructure for apprentices that was once widely available in major industries.  I note also that on transition to civilian life the distinctions between commissioned and non-commissioned ranks with the mess system of social stratification, traditional in that environment largely disappears. In earlier generations when so many people had experience of military service, this was perhaps more influential and people “knew their place”. In recent times even within that environment, attitudes have evolved considerably. 


    For many years now, those in Further Education have bemoaned their inferior treatment relative to universities and few have registered with Engineering Council as an example to students and apprentices.  I sincerely hope that these service leavers do not eventually find themselves disillusioned and a "forgotten army" in the same way that many former IEng registrants did.  

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