Schools hold key to skills crisis says WM Leaders Forum

Marginalisation in classrooms was directly responsible for a drought in young talent entering industry, new manufacturing think tank- The WM Leaders Forum ruled. The shortage could scupper future manufacturing growth with firms forced to turn abroad for key labour, a panel of frontline site managers and skills experts warned. "We've got a cultural gap at schools," said Andrew Churchill, md of JJ Churchill. "I spend a lot of time of time talking to youngsters in primary schools and they've never heard of manufacturing ...That's not good enough." Pupils should go on statutory factory tours or apply real life manufacturing scenarios to maths and science studies to rouse interest in manufacturing careers, according to the Leaders Forum. The Leaders Forum has been launched set by WM in association with Bourton Group to debate a way forward on key challenges facing UK manufacturing. Speaking at the innaugral meeting themed on the skills crisis, Gary Winstanley, supply chain director at Siemens said: "If you don't get to kids before they're 14 years old and plant that engineering seed then you've lost them... We've got to take responsibility here because the government is not going to fix all this. We've got to get into schools." Churchill added: "It's not the teacher's fault there really isn't room made for visits to things that aren't going to be judged in the score card for the school. Why would they visit manufacturers?" The call for a more manufacturing friendly syllabus comes as the national curriculum undergoes a major review. However, the prospects of ringfencing teaching time towards manufacturing jarred with government thinking the Department of Education told WM. A spokesman said: "That's just not where ministers are at. The national curriculum has got to be slimmed down and create more space for teachers to teach. Every single lobby group can make a case to push their own interest- that's the problem." Read the full report of the WM Leaders Forum's first meeting in our July issue.