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30 January 2025

Tackling STEM skill shortages

Investment and the joining up of education provision could provide genuine choice for learners, and talent for employers.

By Professor David Phoenix

Why do the UK and countries across the world produce too few engineers and other technical professionals?

A key cause is our failure to inspire young learners to consider these careers and to facilitate access to technical and professional study early in their education. A 2021 survey by the Institution of Engineering and Technology highlighted that 49 per cent of engineering and technology businesses were having difficulty recruiting skilled workers. At the same time, the Construction Industry Training Board has found that 31 per cent of construction employers face a similar challenge and predict that 251,500 extra construction workers will be required by 2028 to meet industry demand.

In the UK, most learners have their first meaningful opportunity to take up technical subjects at age 16. Prior to that, the majority will not have experienced any technical teaching which means this option is alien to them and they lack understanding of how such subjects relate to education and career progression. The opportunity is further undermined by the lack of attractive facilities and qualified staff, which is being exacerbated by funding cuts. In 2023, for example, only 13 per cent of students studied Design and Technology at GCSE.

In an effort to combat these challenges, my institution, London South Bank University, created LSBU Group. The group brings together secondary, further and higher education providers and works closely with employers to provide technical education experience to young learners with a clear line of sight to the qualification and career pathways they lead to.

LSBU Group includes a technical sixth form which works with local secondary schools to provide advice and guidance on technical qualification pathways, taster sessions using technical equipment and the opportunity to undertake a technical qualification that sits alongside their own GCSE curricula at Level 2. Rather than treating technical education as an unaffordable luxury, the sixth form places it front and centre as an aspirational choice, with teaching that utilises state of the art equipment rarely seen in a sixth form academy setting including 3D printers, plasma cutters and a carbon fibre manufacturing suite.

The sixth form is complemented by a technical college, which teaches a wider age range and provides greater independence than the academy setting This gives students a choice between different learning environments, teaching styles and learner cohorts, so that they can decide which best meets their aspirations. The¬ technical college similarly boasts cutting-edge equipment such as a “green skills centre” with solar photovoltaic panels, electric vehicle chargers and the only borehole in a further education setting in the UK, for ground source heat pump training.

This approach and investment – derived from Greater London Authority and Department for Education grants, as well as employer sponsorship – is driving a notable increase in learner demand. At the technical college, engineering enrolments have grown by 196 per cent since 2019, while BTEC Level 2 engineering has proven so popular at the sixth form this year that we’ve had to expand to support a second cohort.

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We’ve been able to attract corporate investment by using the group to extend our skills offer to existing industry partners. LSBU has a long history of working with employers through sponsored-degree programmes and now over 3,300 higher and degree apprentices. With our group structure, we can offer a one-stop-shop for our employers’ skills needs from GCSE to doctoral level. If, for example, a company wishes to start an employee without GCSE English and maths onto a LSBU degree apprenticeship, we can sign them up to a preapprenticeship course at the college prior to their enrolment.

Through this joined up approach, students taking technical courses with the group can do so with the confidence that they will not encounter any dead ends. The programmes on offer within each part of the group are mapped against each other and aligned to specific careers pathways. Over half the university’s courses are also accredited by professional bodies. A student can study a Design and Development for Engineering and Manufacturing T-Level at the sixth form; go on to do a civil engineering HNC at the technical college; and, should they wish to continue their learning, the HNC content has been aligned to enable them to enter directly into the second year of the corresponding degree at the university.

The UK is not the only country suffering from a STEM skills deficit – the governments in China, India and South Korea, among others, have increased investment in vocational education – and since creating LSBU Group, we have received delegations from countries including the Netherlands, France, Taiwan, Laos, South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan and Vietnam. If we are to provide a genuine choice for our learners, we must invest in specialist institutions that can build employer links and sit within a more integrated tertiary education system.

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