City & Guilds joins EngineeringUK in new partnership
- Innovative 5-year project aims to remove barriers to sustained STEM engagement and track impact on students’ attainment and STEM career aspirations
- Announcement comes ahead of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 2025 (10 to 14 November)
EngineeringUK and the City & Guilds Foundation have announced a new 5-year partnership designed to improve access to consistent, high-quality science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) experiences among secondary school students.
This ambitious initiative will provide substantial multi-year bursaries and expert support to schools, designed to remove barriers to sustained STEM participation for students as they progress from year 7 to year 11. By empowering schools to shift from sporadic, one-off events towards an embedded culture of sustained STEM engagement, the project seeks to positively influence students’ educational performance and aspirations for STEM careers.
Amanda Aldercotte, Head of Evaluation and Impact at EngineeringUK, explains, “We’re excited to partner with the City & Guilds Foundation on this first of its kind project. We want to support schools in offering all their students access to meaningful, sustained STEM experiences that support their aspirations and future career.
“By targeting diverse demographics, we will be able to reach students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those groups typically underrepresented in the engineering and technology sector. In the long term we hope this will improve their access to high-demand STEM careers with higher salaries and increase opportunities for career progression and meaningful employment.”
Polly Rowe, Head of Foundation Programmes and Engagement, City & Guilds Foundation, comments, “We are delighted to be working with EngineeringUK and supporting their initiative focused on pupils facing economic and geographical disadvantages. Inspiring children to engage with STEM activities during secondary education will improve academic outcomes and unlock life-changing opportunities, while helping to address the acute skills shortage in the UK STEM sector.”
Conducted over 5 years, the initiative will be rigorously evaluated by monitoring how participating students’ education choices differ from those in schools without this support. The findings will help inform how schools and funders can best invest in and embed STEM engagement within their curriculum and careers provision.
Examples of STEM activities students might participate in over the 5 years include:
- A hands-on STEM exploration project or workshop, like those listed on Neon
- An engineering and technology related school trip, for example to The Big Bang Fair – the UK's biggest annual STEM event for young people
- A class-based activity where students ‘act like an engineer’, for example, taking part in Tomorrow’s Engineers Week
- Lessons with enhanced resources linking STEM curricula to students’ topics of interest, such as tackling climate change with Climate Schools Programme
- An extra-curricular STEM club, for example, a Climate Action Club, where young people develop their own projects and build team working skills
- Career talks, information, and case studies, from people working in engineering and technology.
We are delighted to be working with EngineeringUK and supporting their initiative focused on pupils facing economic and geographical disadvantages. Inspiring children to engage with STEM activities during secondary education will improve academic outcomes and unlock life-changing opportunities, while helping to address the acute skills shortage in the UK STEM sector.
— Polly Rowe, Head of Foundation Programmes and Engagement, City & Guilds Foundation
