Renishaw
Renishaw apprentices
Inside a workshop, there’s not a sound; no scribble of a pencil or the sawing of wood or the scratching of sandpaper or the cranking of a vice or the clicking of a mouse or the humming of a 3D printer.
Silence provides the backdrop at every pause for thought.
Renishaw Education Outreach Officer Simon Biggs is sat in an otherwise empty classroom inside the company’s Fabrication Development Centre (FDC), a floor-level above the company’s manufacturing operations in Miskin, South Wales. He is experiencing the kind of peace and quiet that only comes weeks into the summer break when schools are out, children are home, and people like him prep. This is not new to Biggs, who joined Renishaw after years working as a design & technology (D&T) teacher in a local school in South Wales. Before that, he was an engineer in the Royal Air Force, but, for the last decade or so, his focus has been on the next generation.
So too has Renishaw's, who developed the education outreach team a few years back, and now has Biggs and his colleague Rebecca Bound in place to lead the programme which spans primary education, secondary education and higher.
“What we look towards is engineers for the future,” Biggs tells TCT.
To appetise, Renishaw invites local schools to its FDC on an almost daily basis. Meanwhile, a printer loan scheme sees ten desktop system distributed to 30 schools every year, with teachers trained up to use the technology and Renishaw staff on hand to take lessons if teachers lack the confidence to do so. A work experience programme invites secondary school children to spend some time with the company, while a graduate scheme helps university alumna transition into the world of work and put theory into practice. Renishaw also has an apprenticeship scheme that has run for 40 years, training young adults up over a four-year period.
It is much needed.
Biggs, as an engineer-turned-educator, is in danger of being labelled a ‘dying breed’. While it’s increasingly hard to attract people into the teaching profession at every level and in almost every subject, the engineering sector is fighting a nationwide skills gap. Draw a Venn diagram and at the centre is D&T, fairing about as well as you might imagine.
"It's becoming more important that we continue our education outreach work."
The UK Government’s initial teacher training (ITT) census has recorded recruitment of teachers being below its target to varying degrees each year since 2012-13. This last academic year, the recruitment of D&T teachers at both primary and secondary school level was around 70% below target. This is compounded by a 23% decrease, per Ofqual, in the number of GCSE entries in D&T between 2018 (117,605) and 2019 (90,805). This latter figure is to be caveated with the 9% increase in art & design entries, where there will be at least some crossover in the skills taught, in the same timeframe. But still, there’s cause for concern, isn’t there?
“Not for us,” Biggs answers, “because we continue to do our outreach work and support the schools in the best way we can. I think there are some schools that can rely on us for guidance and help, like the loan of a 3D printer during GCSE coursework. If they weren’t able to get the loan of that printer, they would struggle to complete some coursework for some children.
“It’s becoming more important that we continue this great education outreach work that we do to support the schools that are struggling in many different ways: it could be staffing, it could be budget cuts, but if we continue what we’re doing, it should support the local schools in the areas around South Wales and Gloucestershire.”
Gloucestershire is where Renishaw is headquartered and where, soon, there will be a second FDC to help expand the company’s education outreach influence. The company sees the skills gap, it sees the budget constraints schools are enduring, and it sees the decline in the interest of design and technology skills. It refuses to stand by idly.
Renishaw
Renishaw Fabrication Development Centre
The FDC at Renishaw's Miskin site.
Through its printer loan scheme and a range of site visits, Renishaw is reaching more than 10,000 primary and secondary school kids every year. It offers 100 work experience opportunities to secondary schoolchildren each summer. A company record 68 apprentices were employed in 2019. And 73 graduates have recently been welcomed into the company too.
Graduates and apprentices are hands-on with the heaviest of machinery inside Renishaw’s doors, working in different divisions throughout the company, before having the opportunity to take up a permanent role. Work experience students will operate in groups of six to research and develop a new product, with each taking responsibility in one of either design, production, manufacturing, purchasing, project management or project marketing. And, at primary level, the children are taught the fundamentals of engineering technologies, whether it be 3D printing with a desktop machine or coding with BBC micro:bit, in a real-world context. Every activity is linked to a job role in the engineering sector, and a subsequent tour of the factory will help visitors join the dots.
“It’s a nice trip when they come here and they have fun, but they’ve also got to go away having learnt something,” Biggs says. “It could be 3D printing, it could be coding, it could be about the apprenticeship scheme, but what the idea is when they do leave here, they’ve got a different idea, perhaps, of what they came here thinking an engineer was because they’ve got misconceptions of what engineers do. Some of them don’t think females can be engineers, they think it’s dirty and smelly, [they think] it’s a low paid profession. We’ve got to try to get over those hurdles while they’re here and [send them] away with a positive thought of what an engineer is.”
The question of pay can be answered with direct comparisons to other professions, the subject of cleanliness can be countered with a tour of their almost spotless facilities, but the other one, the concerns around whether females can be engineers, that’s harder to solve. Because of course they can, but they might already be conditioned to think otherwise. It’s one of Renishaw’s biggest challenges, Biggs says. The company tries to combat this by inviting all-girls schools to the FDC and engaging with local workshops specifically designed to encourage young girls into STEAM, having female employees on hand to share their experiences.
Renishaw
Renishaw Education girls in tech event
Renishaw hosts 'girls in tech' event.
Biggs says the company has seen small signs their efforts are working, whether it be improved engagement with activities or a minor increase in the number of females applying for its work experience, apprenticeship and graduate schemes. But like everything Biggs and his team does, it will take a while to see the fruits, and it might only happen in the immediate vicinity.
“We’re long term,” he emphasises. “Hopefully we will see results in the near future of more females going into the engineering field, the recruitment numbers going up for people taking engineering degrees, numbers at A level physics, for example, increasing, GCSE increasing. We might not see it nationally, but we might see it through schools in the local area because they know that perhaps Renishaw could be somewhere they could work in the future.”
And so, as Biggs sits in his empty workshop, he is planning. The FDC in Gloucestershire is currently being built. What will follow is an extension and expansion of the 3D printer loan scheme. Encouraging young females is a priority, and so more open days orientated to females are to be arranged. Finally, he wants to open a dialogue with more parents, encouraging them to visit the sites in Miskin or Gloucestershire, “because they’re the influence we don’t always get to speak to.”
This is all being done to ensure the scribbling, the sawing, the scratching, the cranking, the clicking, and the humming all continue, whether it be in a classroom of a school, or perhaps just as likely going forward, in a workshop above a factory.
This article was first published inside TCT Magazine Europe Edition Volume 27 Issue 5. Download your free copy here.
