Ian Pearson - What does Industry want from our Scientists and Engineers?

Check against delivery

It's great to be here for this event during the fifteenth National Science Week. Last year, nearly 800,000 people took part in around 3,000 events across the UK. We are expecting to top that this year.

No Government has been more consistently committed to promoting British science than this one. Many of the available indicators of science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) supply have been moving in the right direction for a number of years now - with overall attainment at GCSE, A level, first degree and postgraduate results on an upward curve.

Encouraging progress but challenges remain.

I am optimistic that, with the help of the other bodies in this country that have an interest in promoting British science, we can do this.

In schools, we now have more science graduates teaching science than at any time in history. That’s partly the result of more bursaries, ‘Golden Hellos’ and better teacher training across the board.

We have 18,000 science and engineering ambassadors from industry and academia going into schools on a voluntary basis. Ambassadors come from a variety of different careers, at all levels. And many SEAs are also undergraduates, studying at universities across the UK.

These individuals act as invaluable role models to students and they can show pupils not just what a subject is but also what it's for.

On Tuesday I'll be speaking at a reception for Science and Engineering Ambassadors, in the House of Lords, alongside a young woman called Claire Carr who worked as a civil engineer the St Pancras renovation project. Her experiences of working as an engineer are far removed from more popular conceptions of engineers. We need all the positive PR we can get for engineering - three quarters of young people don't know what engineers do.

Cross-government plans to improve the profile of engineering include the Technology and Engineering in Schools Strategy (TESS) and the National Engineering Programme (NEP) to promote the role of engineering in society. These are both being delivered through the Royal Academy of Engineering. Moreover, the new engineering diploma - available from September 2008 will help provide more pupils with the skills to go into engineering degrees or employment.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families is leading a 3 year campaign to promote uptake of STEM subjects in schools.

I want to see a broader student cohort and improve the numbers of those studying science and engineering at all levels - then we must first break down stereotypes that surround some science subjects. For example, in subjects allied to medicine, there are five times more women than men. In the biological sciences, there are over 40% more women than men. Meanwhile, there are about 11,000 more men than women studying the physical sciences. And in the case of the NVQ in construction, over 50 times more awards go to men than to women.

Mentioning NVQs and leads me onto the Further Education and skills sector - where there are also plenty of positive things going on. As they must, if we are to enable our workforce to adapt to the increasingly technology-driven 21st Century workplace and meet Sandy Leitch’s recommendations.

Currently, we are on course to meet our commitment to have 12 National Skills Academies by the end of the year, taking us closer to our goal of making skills more sector-relevant.

Other Government Initiatives such as Train to Gain, Apprenticeships and Skills Pledge are all helping to create a more tailored and flexible workforce. Close partnership between business and providers is central to the success of all three.

And our focus on apprenticeships is paying off. Over the past decade we have more than doubled the number of young people and adults starting apprenticeships. Whilst completions have risen from around 40,000 in 2001/02 to over 100,000 now.

You can hardly fail to be aware of the public debate that has been generated by what the media mischievously dubbed 'McQualifications'. The QCA are indeed currently working with around 75 employers to explore ways of accrediting their own training programmes. I’d just like to point out that the QCA's reputation is hardly one of being lax and I believeit’s fundamentally right to recognise the training and development work that employers do in their companies.

Moving on to sector skills councils, I would just like to say a couple of things about the work of SEMTA. SEMTA is the Sector Skills Council (SSC) for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing sectors. It's one of the largest SSCs covering 100,000 companies employing 2.5 million people. The companies that it represents provide up to 10% of our GDP - £74 billion every year - and contribute 33% to total UK exports.

SEMTA were involved in the pilot phase of Sector Qualification Strategies (SQS) and are taking several key initiatives forward on the Government's behalf. They have published UK-wide Sector Skills Agreements for the Automotive, Aerospace, Electronics, Marine and Bioscience sectors. SEMTA is also working with partner Sector Skills Councils to develop the 14-19 Diploma in Engineering I mentioned earlier and the Diploma in Manufacturing - which will be available in 2009.

At Higher Education level, long-standing decline in the numbers of university entrants coming forward in almost all the sciences has been reversed. We are all working hard on the agenda and the professional associations are playing a key role, too. For example, the 300 bursaries for physics undergraduates that the Institute of Physics offers have had a real impact.

But still, I recognise that employers complain that there aren't enough home-grown graduates in scientific and technological subjects. You'll no doubt be hearing more on that account from the CBI later on.

Today I'd like to make clear that we're certainly not going to slacken our efforts to produce more scientists. But the problem is complex. The evidence suggests that up to three-quarters of the science graduates we do produce ends up working outside science.

That's serious because it implies skills going to waste. So we must - and UK employers' must - do more to promote careers in science.

Bodies like the CBI and the ABPI have also complained that some science graduates don't have the skills sets they need to work in the scientific industries.

That fact underlines the need for much closer collaboration between those who teach skills and those who turn them into products and profits. DIUS will shortly be publishing a higher-level skills strategy that will have much more to say on this issue.

Right across the spectrum, from school to postdoctoral level, we are seeing the beneficial results for the UK science base that flow from dialogue and joint working between education and training providers, employers and professional associations.

Government will continue to promote more and closer links of this kind.

Finally, the science challenge isn't confined to training scientists, either. There's also a job to be done with the general public.

Public dialogue on science issues is crucial when it impacts so heavily on our lives; the Public Attitudes to Science Survey, published on Tuesday, found that people are becoming more interested in science. Four fifths of those surveyed said that they were 'amazed' by advancements in science and technology. The role of science in society is another area where DIUS will shortly set out its plans in a new strategy.

I'll now hand over to Tim Bradshaw from CBI and I look forward to the discussion a bit later about what we are doing and what more needs to be done. Thanks.