Mon, 02 November, 2020
This week, 2-6 November is Tomorrow’s Engineers Week (#TEWeek20), designed to inspire young people to look at the opportunities available to them in the world of engineering. Delivered through digital and social media platforms, this initiative sees institutions, employers and schools unite to provide advice and guidance on how to become an engineer of the future.
Engineers will be taking over social media channels to answer questions and ‘The Big Quiz’ for students aged 11-16. In addition, The Royal Academy of Engineering will run their ‘This Is Engineering’ day this Wednesday.
TWI have long supported outreach into schools and colleges to promote engineering to the next generation and this is particularly important right now. Research has shown that 30% of 11-19 year-olds believe that the careers that are open to them have changed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is putting constraints on the aspirations of young people while, at the same time 76% of these young people have not been able to access any formal careers activities since March.
Just last week, we announced that TWI is a founding signatory of the Tomorrow’s Engineering Code, a new collaborative framework for organisations to work together to increase the diversity and number of young people entering engineering.
Dr Hilary Leevers, the Chief Executive of EngineeringUK, explained the importance of such measures, saying, “Engineering, manufacturing and technology provide a breadth of exciting careers that will be at the heart of rebuilding the UK economy post Covid-19. Many thousands of engineers will be needed in new jobs in infrastructure, decarbonisation and maintenance projects to upgrade our hospitals, schools and road network, make public buildings greener and help the UK achieve its aspirations of achieving Net Zero by 2050.”
You can find out more about Tomorrow’s Engineers Week by visiting www.tomorrowsengineers.org.uk/teweek.