Kim Biddulph
Head of Engagement Projects , EngineeringUK
Kim leads the development and delivery of our activities with schools, such as Energy Quest. She was instrumental in applying a user-centred design process to the development of the Climate Schools Programme.
Kim has 25 years of experience designing and developing engagement activities with and for young people of all ages from 0 to 18 and beyond. She is passionate about widening access to fulfilling careers for young people from all backgrounds.
How we reach (and engage) students from groups underrepresented in engineering and tech
As part of The Code explores… designing inclusive programmes series, Kim Biddulph has written about targeting young people when designing and developing activities for schools.
The Tomorrow’s Engineers Code is a community of more than 400 organisations committed to increasing the number and diversity of young people entering engineering careers. Launched in 2025, The Code explores… is a fresh approach to delivering content for the Code community. Topics are explored more deeply through a series of different events over several weeks.
Our approach to targeting
Here at EngineeringUK we use a targeted universalism approach to engaging students. This means we don’t run activities for specific demographic groups. Instead, we use a range of techniques to make sure we reach and impact these students.
Targeting schools
We offer our activities to all UK state-maintained secondary schools, but we prioritise schools who meet certain criteria. Our priority schools are those which are likely to have the highest proportion of young people from groups who are underrepresented in the engineering profession.
Around 50% (it varies by nation) of state-maintained UK secondary schools meet this criteria. Because we also design our activities to engage whole year groups, we reach more young people on free school meals and from UK minority ethnic groups when we work with priority schools.
Including students from groups underrepresented in engineering and tech
When our activities can’t reach whole year groups, we ask teachers to choose students from groups underrepresented in engineering and technology to take part. This helps teachers decide who to prioritise for our programmes and gives the background about why.
This is an example of the statement we send for some of our programmes:
We aim to inspire all young people into STEM careers, not only those already passionate about science and engineering. We encourage you to involve a cross-section of students (for example, whole year groups or classes) and to include groups underrepresented in engineering and technology:
- girls (at least 50% if possible)
- disabled young people and those with Special Educational Needs
- those from UK minority ethnic backgrounds, including in particular Black, Black British, Caribbean or African young people
- those eligible for Free School Meals
But some young people just aren’t interested in STEM… are they?
Running activities using targeted universalism means we encounter many young people who are less interested in STEM. We know that this lack of interest may be unmoveable. But we also know, from the Science Education Tracker, that a lot of young people rule themselves out of STEM because they don’t feel it is for them.
If they don’t have a family member working in STEM, they may not be able to imagine what the work is like. If they don’t see themselves represented in STEM jobs, they may think they’re not welcome in the sector. If they don’t have confidence that they’re good enough to work in STEM, they may have turned off.
We do research to understand what the barriers are for young people, and ways to overcome them.
One of the main findings from our research is that doing practical science is a key motivator, with girls and others less engaged with STEM statistically more likely to say this.
Yet, opportunities for hands-on practicals are in decline in school, with only 26% of GCSE students doing practical work at least once a fortnight.
We make sure our activities include hands-on opportunities.
Sometimes our research highlights particular topics that engage young people.
We found out in 2023 that 35% of young people were interested in careers tackling climate change. Interestingly, it was also clear that there was sustained interest in climate change topics from girls throughout their schooling.
With only 16% of girls saying that engineering is suitable for them (as opposed to 44% of boys), we think reaching and inspiring girls is vital. This led us to develop the Climate Schools Programme – explicitly linking solutions that could slow or stop climate change with engineering careers. We are continuing to learn about influences on girls’ pathways into STEM through the gender pathways collective.
More than desk-based research
Large-scale research steers us in the right direction. However, when developing our activities we always work with young people to understand the approach that is most likely to increase their interest in a career in the sector. This includes not just the content and activities, but also the framing and key messaging.
We make sure we talk to a range of students – focusing on those from groups underrepresented in engineering and tech careers and those without much prior STEM interest. By intentionally including girls’ voices in activity creation and testing, for instance, we have found ways to help more girls reconsider engineering and tech careers as part of their future.
There will be more about youth insight later in the Code explores... series on designing inclusive programmes.
Learning what works…
Finally, we collect and review student feedback.
Even though we do so much discovery and testing with young people beforehand, we do want to check that the activity lands how we expected.
Additionally, when we ask students to tell us what they thought about an activity, we ask them about their demographic characteristics. Most students are happy to fill these in. This means we can split the feedback by gender, ethnicity, free school meals and disability status, as well as prior STEM interest.
We use this data to understand how we are impacting underrepresented groups compared to others. If necessary, we consider testing changes to the activity to make the impact more equal.
What has been heartening about the feedback about the Climate Schools Programme, for example, is that the approach seems to be impactful with girls. Furthermore, there was increased interest in engineering careers from students from UK minority ethnic backgrounds, on free school meals and with SEND.
It’s all about timing
The targeted universal approach works well for our focus audience – students aged 10 to 14. It is a time when every student has the potential to become an engineer but has very little knowledge about what engineering is.
By trying to reach every student – and making sure that when we do, our activities are impactful – we hope to make every young person aware of the range of options open to them.
Explore our resources
These can support targeting your programmes with young people:
- EngineeringUK's evaluation tool, measures bank
- Our priority schools criteria 2025/26
- Impact of priority schools criteria report
- The Code explores… designing inclusive programmes series
