Engineering

David Guthrie, Practitioner, Alliance Learning (Training Provider)
Gareth Humphreys MBE, Employer, Young People's Training and Development, MBDA
Ruth Kay, Practitioner, Head of Engineering Diploma, Mid Kent College
Steve Franklin, Employer, Training and Development, CB&I
Jonathan Britton, Practitioner, Director of Post-16 Education, Archbishop Holgate's School

Narrator: Employer engagement for the Engineering Diploma can involve lots of different employers and often the obvious companies are contacted first. Bolton, like many consortia, have ensured that they have a co-ordinated approach to avoid alienating employers.

David Guthrie: Employers don’t like a thousand and one people knocking on their door, asking the same thing or about similar activities. Therefore we feel like having a one-stop-shop approach, where you’ve got an individual or a group of individuals who are specifically focused on going out and talking to employers. You could have a company that could offer support in six or seven Diploma lines, and you wouldn’t want six or seven Diploma Line Leads knocking on their door and saying, "Would you be able to support one of my students?" So in Bolton what we looked at was having a central, focused group.

Gareth Humphries: As a business we’re working with two consortia, one in Stevenage in North Hertfordshire and here in Bolton. With each consortia I have one key contact and that is the way for me, how it’s going to be successful. I do not want to be dealing with lots of schools. I want to go through one key contact and that’s what the relationship is about.

Narrator: Some practitioners have found that a direct approach works best for them. This is usually for those that have already established links with the industry. Even with this approach, it’s important to know who is contacting who.

Ruth Kay: When you're trying to initially make contact with an employer, it’s good to find out a name, rather than just dropping them a random e-mail. Do research, find out who is in which position in the company, and then call them and speak to them personally.

Narrator: From the employer’s point of view, they would like to deal with education in the same way they do within industry.

Steve Franklin: I think you’ve got to start with the small things, so, simple communication. If you’re in education and you ring me and you want to set up a meeting, then I’m probably going to say yes if you’re in my local area. It doesn’t help if I turn up at the wrong address. So just simple things, like making sure that I actually have a location map. I visited a school a week or two back. I had the address and the postcode. I put it in to the computer, not being into "sat nav", and I ended up at the back end of this estate with no school in sight. And had it not been for the local milkman pointing me in the right direction, it would have taken me another hour to find the real address which was a mile away from where I was sent.

Jonathan Britton: You've got to be proactive in contacting companies. You need to get out there and you need to make the links with companies. Once you have those links, it’s then about getting into them; and whether or not they visit you and you give them a tour of your school, and you talk about your proposal; or whether it’s you leaving the school and going into the business and giving a short ten minute pitch. You need to be willing to be able to do that and you need a very clear message, and your message certainly needs to be tailored for the size of the business. And that’s what we’ve done. You know, there are time implications of that, but if you believe in the new Diplomas, you believe in this applied curriculum and you believe in this partnership enriching the curriculum, then clearly that time investment is part of that commitment at the start of the course.

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