Extract from oral
question (Lords) on Industrial Strategy: Engagement
(CB): My Lords, I
have just come from a meeting of the Institution of Engineering
and Technology at which it launched its report Skills and Demand
in Industry. The one thing it pointed out to everybody was that
only 9% of technology and engineering staff are women, yet 15% of
them graduate from our engineering schools and in my own
university of Cambridge the figure is over 20%. What are the
Government doing to ensure that more women become engineers in
industry and participate in it, especially through the apprentice
route?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department
for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Prior of
Brampton) (Con): It is interesting that only 15% of
women graduate in this subject. In the case of medicine, for
example, the figure is now well over 50% and is nearly 60%. It is
a very good question. Interestingly, I went to Rolls-Royce last
week and met a number of apprentices there, some of whom are
doing degree-level apprenticeships. That may be one way of
increasing the number of women going into this area. It has been
a problem for many years and we are only in the foothills of
cracking it.
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Extract from committee
stage (Lords) (day 2) of the Technical and Further Education
Bill
Lord
(Lab):...Given that we are looking to drive up the
number of SMEs involved, the risk will not be with the larger
organisations with well-established reputations, such
as Rolls-Royce, BT, British Aerospace and a whole
host of others that have been mentioned before. We know that
people who go into those organisations will get a quality
apprenticeship. That is not the problem. The problem will be in
small and medium-sized concerns. Given that the success of this
enterprise in driving up significantly the number of
apprenticeships will depend on ensuring that we embrace more of
those organisations in providing apprenticeships, a lot more than
currently do, this is not an insignificant issue.
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