Engineering Everywhere is an epsrc funded project aimed at making engineering and engineers a transparent feature in the examined curriculum of young people.

Despite a cascade of initiatives from many sources, engineering remains a Cinderella subject at school level. Perceptions of engineers as semi-skilled workers with oily rags are still widespread and are a major influence in the poor uptake of engineering courses by school leavers. This has led to a dearth of well-qualified engineers entering the research community and the labour market in the UK.

We propose the introduction of relevant and contextualised engineering ideas and concepts into the classroom for a high proportion of the pre-16 school population. Crucially, this project is not proposing discretionary enrichment or outreach activities. Rather, engineering focussed material will form an integral part of the assessed science curriculum. This project comes at a time of unique opportunity.

With the new GCSEs introduced in September 2006 it is likely that 40% of 14-16 year olds will follow a science programme with an applied science component counting from 50% or more of that programme. The specifications include GCSE Applied Science (Double Award), GCSE Additional Applied Science, BTEC First Certificate and Diploma, and OCR Level 2 Nationals.

With little or no other curricular material available or in preparation, we aim to provide resources for schools and colleges reach a minimum target of 80,000 students per year.

The project is run by the Engineering Group:

4science
British Association for the Advencement of Science
University of Glasgow
Sheffield Hallam University