Why does social impact matter?
We work with employers, educators and partners to help address engineering and technology skills shortages. Through high-quality outreach, work-related experiences and career inspiration, we help young people access opportunities and pathways into future jobs and careers.
Our mission is to enable more young people from all backgrounds to be informed, inspired and supported to progress into engineering and technology. Encouraging young people onto these pathways helps build the future workforce and talent pipeline the UK needs.
When looking at our social impact, we assess how we're turning our mission into action.
Our first social impact review since launching our 2023 to 2028 strategy brings together evidence from across our work. It shows where we are making the greatest difference and where there is more to do.
We’ve synthesised evidence from multiple sources, including our annual check-in with Code community members, stakeholder surveys and focus groups, and our school activity evaluations. The report tracks progress against 4 impact areas:
improving the quality, targeting and inclusivity of outreach
increasing connection and collaboration
increasing young people's capability, opportunity and motivation
increasing reach and participation of underrepresented groups
The findings act as both a reflection on progress so far and a platform for shaping the next phase of activity, leadership and advocacy work.
Improving the quality, targeting and inclusivity of outreach
EngineeringUK helps organisations improve the quality, reach and impact of their STEM outreach activities. This supports more young people to access opportunities linked to future employment and careers in engineering and technology..
The Tomorrow's Engineers Code and Neon quality standards give outreach providers practical tools, evidence and shared standards for delivery to improve their engagement activities for young people.
Our priority schools approach helps organisations target outreach towards communities most underrepresented in engineering and technology. This helps employers and outreach providers reach young people who may face the greatest barriers to accessing engineering and tech careers.
The EDI criteria document provided by EngineeringUK has not only helped us engage with young people from diverse groups, but to also ensure that our engagement is both effective and inspiring. This has developed our outreach and engagement: taking it from being more than just information sharing, to inspiring curiosity and a passion for engineering.
— Code Signatory
Increasing connection and collaboration
We connect organisations across the engineering and technology sector to share learning, resources and collaborative opportunities. Together, these partnerships help strengthen pathways into engineering and tech careers and improve access to opportunities for young people.
In our most recent annual stakeholder survey, 4 out of 5 agreed that EngineeringUK creates opportunities for partnerships and collaborations in the wider STEM community.
Through the Code community we strengthen how members share learning and evaluation findings with others. Events like Tomorrow's Engineers Live and our peer-to-peer learning groups bring the sector together to discuss shared challenges and good practice.
Increasing young people's capability, opportunity and motivation
Our activities help young people build the confidence, knowledge, skills and awareness needed to progress towards engineering and technology careers.
The Big Bang Fair, Energy Quest and more build young people’s capital and career readiness. This is through hands-on experiences, opportunities to develop key skills, access to role models.
These short-term gains accumulate over time, which is supported by our Sustained STEM Engagement Framework for coordinated, repeated engagement.
Sustained engagement helps young people develop the knowledge, confidence and aspirations that support progression into further learning, training, apprenticeships and future employment opportunities.
How engineering helps with little everyday stuff, some that we didn't even know, has something to do with it. And how they come up with brilliant ideas and the teamwork.
— Feedback from a female student who participated in an Energy Quest workshop
Increasing reach and participation of underrepresented groups
We reached more than 206,000 young people through activities for schools in 2024/25, across 43% of all UK secondary schools. More than half of these were priority schools serving communities underrepresented in the engineering and technology workforce. This helps ensure more young people can access opportunities linked to future careers and employment.
In 2024/25, our bursaries removed financial barriers for more than 26,000 students in 114 priority schools. 84% of teachers participating in our bursary programme said their school would not have been able to take part in that STEM activity without it.
Our evaluations help us understand what works in reaching young people who may face barriers to participation, or who are less engaged in STEM.
Inspiring young people
Do you want young people to consider STEM careers? We do. So, we help schools and students access quality STEM careers inspiration via programmes such as the Big Bang, Neon, the Climate Schools Programme – and more.
Support our work
We don’t charge schools for any of the programmes, resources or services we offer. Financial support helps us develop and deliver programmes to support more schools and reach more young people.
