About ten years ago I was lucky enough to be the mentor for a group of Grammar School girls coming up to taking their A levels, thinking of a career in Engineering.  This was an Engineering Education Scheme run by the Engineering Development Trust.  The aim was to give the students a taste of a real life industrial engineering issue, come up with a solution, present it, cost it, build a model and so on.  Finally the finished proposals were exhibited in an event at the Engineering dept of Kent University along with about ten other teams from schools all over Kent.  My role was to supply the real life issue, which existed within the production line of the factory where I was an Engineer.  During our weekly meetings my job was to answer questions and help them from going off in the wrong direction too far but not to directly give answers.


I found that once we had established a way forward to a solution and there were physical issues to address they were pretty good at coming up with ideas and progressing.  It was the first step which involved abstract thoughts about the concept which gave great problems.  Some of the proposed solutions they came up with displayed a dramatic misunderstanding of what I thought were straightforward concepts!  I found it very important to spend a long time at this stage trying to get them to understand why each one wouldn't work.  I don't mean to put these girls down, its just a point I felt relevant to the discussions here.  I could see that they were all very capable achedemically but at their age I had already been an apprentice for a couple of years and I already changed the clutch on my first car single handed.  My achedemic qualifications came a little later.


I remember carrying out an emergency repair to a ship-to-shore container crane spreader, with the Operations Manager looking at his watch hoping the ship wouldn't be held up.  I sent a graduate Engineer who was helping back to the workshop (which was half a mile away) for a split pin.  He came back with a pop rivet!  This was his first taste of hands-on maintenance so I mustn't be too hard on him and at this point in my career he probably knew a hell of a lot more than me about higher Engineering.


If ever I talk to young people about qualifications I always say no matter what make sure you completely understand the concept of whatever you are learning, then hopefully logical thought will help lead you through to the answer of a question and this approach will obviously help all your life in the real world.


I must stress that I consider myself a practical sort and achedemic qualifications did not come easy for me.

About ten years ago I was lucky enough to be the mentor for a group of Grammar School girls coming up to taking their A levels, thinking of a career in Engineering.  This was an Engineering Education Scheme run by the Engineering Development Trust.  The aim was to give the students a taste of a real life industrial engineering issue, come up with a solution, present it, cost it, build a model and so on.  Finally the finished proposals were exhibited in an event at the Engineering dept of Kent University along with about ten other teams from schools all over Kent.  My role was to supply the real life issue, which existed within the production line of the factory where I was an Engineer.  During our weekly meetings my job was to answer questions and help them from going off in the wrong direction too far but not to directly give answers.


I found that once we had established a way forward to a solution and there were physical issues to address they were pretty good at coming up with ideas and progressing.  It was the first step which involved abstract thoughts about the concept which gave great problems.  Some of the proposed solutions they came up with displayed a dramatic misunderstanding of what I thought were straightforward concepts!  I found it very important to spend a long time at this stage trying to get them to understand why each one wouldn't work.  I don't mean to put these girls down, its just a point I felt relevant to the discussions here.  I could see that they were all very capable achedemically but at their age I had already been an apprentice for a couple of years and I already changed the clutch on my first car single handed.  My achedemic qualifications came a little later.


I remember carrying out an emergency repair to a ship-to-shore container crane spreader, with the Operations Manager looking at his watch hoping the ship wouldn't be held up.  I sent a graduate Engineer who was helping back to the workshop (which was half a mile away) for a split pin.  He came back with a pop rivet!  This was his first taste of hands-on maintenance so I mustn't be too hard on him and at this point in my career he probably knew a hell of a lot more than me about higher Engineering.


If ever I talk to young people about qualifications I always say no matter what make sure you completely understand the concept of whatever you are learning, then hopefully logical thought will help lead you through to the answer of a question and this approach will obviously help all your life in the real world.


I must stress that I consider myself a practical sort and achedemic qualifications did not come easy for me.