Engineering & Manufacturing T-Level

In England, T-Levels, which are aimed towards 16-year-old students, are being introduced and are equivalent to three A-Levels. These two-year courses will mix classroom learning with on-the-job experience, involving around 45 days of working within a company. NDT will be covered as part of the syllabus for the Engineering & Manufacturing T-Level. BINDT has been approached to help with this and, as the Institute already has very comprehensive documentation, I am hoping it can make worthwhile contributions to the teaching material. One of the problems we face in the NDT industry is that some people have never heard of us. Most members of the public claim not to know what NDT is; however, when you ask them to consider medical X-rays and ultrasonic scans for babies they then understand. They are surprised to know it is legally mandated and around 100,000 people in the UK may undertake some form of inspection work using NDT methods (including visual). While it is early days with these new T-Levels, I am hopeful that, now having heard of NDT, students will complete their studies and, if the content is suitably inspiring, that they can be attracted to our profession through apprenticeships or technical degree programmes. I know through interviewing hundreds of youngsters for apprenticeships that there is ‘something missing’, as they do not do enough practical engineering, science or maths at school. I have vivid school memories (pre 1997!) of running experiments on electrolysis, parallel circuits, electrical motors and Snell’s Law, to name but a few topics (which is why I went off to study physics). Alas, when I interview them about some very basic concepts, they just do not seem to be able to link electrolysis to batteries, for instance, or Snell’s Law to sound waves and not light waves. Yet, I can remember the joy at primary school of seeing Lego traffic lights being controlled by a BBC microcomputer and knowing that this was what I wanted to do in the future! Something is definitely amiss with education these days. I am keen that the apprentices under my supervision all engage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities in schools and hope that, between this and their social networking sites, it will drum up more interest in the profession.

Please note that the views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not represent the views of Rolls-Royce.

Iain Baillie is with Lead Employer Rolls-Royce and is involved with the NDT apprenticeships scheme. He is also BINDT President Elect.

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