Engineering Students

Answer: I thank my hon. Friend for his detailed interest in these issues. The report is interesting; we are already responding to a number of the issues raised in the research and I know that the academy welcomes many of the steps we are taking. Links and collaboration between the education system and companies are important to ensure that the needs of industry are understood and reflected in the curriculum. In particular, the establishment of the sector skills councils, the move on specialised diplomas and the establishment of foundation degrees are helping us to change the situation.

This is an answer to the Oral question asked on Thursday, 29 June 2006 by Ashok Kumar (Labour).

Question: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Has he seen the report that the Royal Academy recently published, called ““Educating Engineers for the 21st Century: the Industry View””? It concluded that university undergraduate engineering education needs to be completely overhauled. The academy has also asked for stronger collaboration between industry and universities as well as schools so that we can have engineers in the 21st century. I ask my hon. Friend to take those recommendations seriously and implement many of the ideas in the report.

Secondary information