The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 16

SCHOOLS AND INDUSTRY 16 THE GUARDIAN Thursday July 8 1978 Harford' Thomas finds a bad image for industry running generally through the essays Thuhibs down report are an uneasy testimony to the amount that' still needs to be done to convince' schools that industry can offer exciting careers arid is creating the wealth on which the prosperity of all of us is based. Thfe view of. industry is still too often as Alex Day points outgone of "beastly black pits, chim-. neys churning out gases and sprawling characterless industrial And 'perhaps one of the most' important points of 'all is made by Dr Karen Worgan, who' h.as.gone back to teaching from industry. The best advertisement for a career in industry is? a satisfied young industrialist.

If. companies could give more excitment and responsibility to the youngsters they took on, perhaps that would do more to change the image of industry in schools than anything else'. FRANCES CAIRNCROSS man who dreamt-, up the idea" of a schools and industry cohSpetition' irrj" the first and Sir Peter Carey, Permanent Secretary of the Department of Industry. Yesterday, the nine prize-winners received their prizes at the Guardian from Mr Leslie Huckfield, MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the.Department of! Industry. Mr Huckfield and hisvDepartmenit have taken an enthusiastic, interest in the competition; and plans to follow it 'up by inviting the three winning teachers to a.

seminar on ways in which industry can make itself more attractive to, able pupils, and by inviting the two first prize winners in the students' categories to visit one of their regional offices, in order to learn more about the industrial structure of the region. From industry's point of view, the winning entries which are published in this special FOR the second year running, the Guardian has held a competition to try to discover what school children think of industry. This year, we asked for some constructive advice. What could be done, we asked, to make industry a more attractive career And to draw in ideas from staff as well as students, we invited full-time teachers to enter the competition as well. The competition was run in conjunction with the Industrial Society, which has itself been a leading force in trying to improve understanding of industry in schools.

Two of the judges Mr Ben Davies, the chairman of Unigate Dairies, and Mr Derek Gladwin, regional secretary of the General and Municipal Workers' Union are on the Council of the Industrial Society. The other two were Keith Lockyer, Professor of Ooerations Management at Bradford University, the THE WINNERS TEACHERS 1st Arthur Lingard Headmaster Billericay School Billericay 2nd Mrs Valerie Ivison Headteacher Hope High School Salford 3rd Dr Karen Worgan Teacher ILEA Avery Hill College South Croydon Leslie Huckfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Industry, seeks ways to persuade the community to value more highly those people who work in industry. The matchstalk men image prosper, it needs a fair share of, our more able people to work in it, especially on the production side. There is already a considerable amount of work being done by industry, education and Government to interest young people in industrial careers, and the essays show signs that this as beginning to bear fruit. I have recently been speaking about our own industry education unit in the Department of Industry.

I want to see its activities expanded. Several prize winners mention that they have benefited from activities such as sixth form industry conferences, well conducted factory visits and helpful economics lessons. I am delighted to see that of the 100 entrants for the competition, 49 are women, as are two-thirds of the prize winners. I hope that this is a sign that the traditional prejudice against women entering the higher levels of industry is beginning to break down. For a very long time now.

people who work in industry have been undervalued by the rest of the community. I want those in industry to be as highly regarded as those who work at a similar level of responsibility in medioine or the social services. As the Prime Minister has said This is a perverted and distorted view of our society which has to change." If we want to encourage more able young people to enter industry we I WAS very interested to see the prize winning essays in this competition. The Government, as part of the industrial strategy, has been working for some time on the problem of how to attract more of our more able young people into manufacturing industry. It is encouraging to have some suggestions from the young people themselves.

The prize winners are clearly all agreed that the problem is a serious one. Christopher Wade has even carried out a survey among his contemporaries and their views on industry apparently range from "disorganised" and ''inefficient" to "boring" and To quote from his essay: "Not one had anything good to say about British industry and the majority thought it was the last place they would consider when choosing a career." In my experience of representing a very industrially-orientated constituency, not all young people are as disenchanted as that. But it is undeniably the case that, whereas in 1966 over 40 per cent of graduates starting work entered industry. 'n 1976 the proportion had dropped to 29 per cent. There have been encouraging signs of improvement recently, but I know that many able young people still do not realise that industry can provide them with a rewarding and challenging career.

The reasons suggested by the prize winners for this state of affairs give neither industry nor the press and television any cause for self-congratulation. The education service itself comes in for its share of criticism. The prize winners make it clear that industry must do a great deal more to inform able young people about what is involved in an industrial career and that if this information is to have any impact it must be 17-18 YEARS 1st Christopher Wade Warwick School Warwick 2nd Janne Hawley Shirebrook School Mansfield 3rd Veronica Davies The Queen's School Chester 15-16 YEARS 1st Alex Day Dinnington Comprehensive School Nottinghamshire 2nd Deborah Jaffey The Maynard School Exeter 3rd Philip Sales Royal Grammar School Guildford is no-' hope for British industry." However, most blame is put on industry it-self for bad publicity, and. failing, to establish contacts. with schools.

To summarise a number of views, little is done correct the stereotype image, publicity ds weak, uninspired, negative, and compares unfavourably with that of the Aumy. Students find that some careers teachers know little about industry, or are discouraging about it. and a teacher reports that youth employment officers are not always well informed. Snobbery into it, with parents and teacher academics biased against industry. Frdni an Esher "Haw many parents would encourage their daughter to go into industry There is not much to relieve the picture of prejudice unshaken toy fuazy-edged publicity.

Only from Kirfcby is there a compliment. There a student finds that much has been done to show that industry has prospects to offer. What is to be done, then There is some encouragement to be drawn from the fact that students and teachers are virtually unanimous in wanting a lot more to be done to make industry known to the schools. Many of the suggestions nwde are repeated from a variety of different places. Some of them are: Visits, tours, industry school exchanges, work experience, sandwich courses in industry career success stories from recent school leavers who have gone into industry, and visits and talks by young people from industry (it sounds as though some stuffy elderly gents have been delivering some stuffy (lectures).

Everybody seems to be totally agreed that it is up to industry to take he initiative. If the stereotype image is unfair, industry should say so, says a North London teacher. Let them explain about skilled jobs, about research and design departments, let them show they are modern and well run, that there are exciting career prospects in management. No one has tried to woo my says Alex Day, a Worksop schoolgirl. One of the keynotes sound- ing through a number of these essays is the demand that young people should be treated gr.eaterrrepecf..

would like" t0 be listened says a-SaKord schoolgirl. They want be involved. They talk- of participation, of grop working and jofo rotation to take the boredom out of production line. The teachers too report that their students want to be recognised as peoVple'-in- their own right. Democratic young- sters, it is said, do not like the segregation of staff and worker canteens.

They want their ideas to be listened to. (the Salford schoolgirl's phrase used by an Edinburgh teacher). They look for con- sultation i industry, not confrontation, with more, worker participation. ('One- of the objections to -working in industry most frequently mentioned by the. students is industrial Above all the students and the teachers fear the impersonal, anonymous cog-m-the- wheel reputation, of industrial work.

Industrial image builders might take as a starting point the- conclu-. sion of a Kettering teacher: Perhaps the one reward most needed and' least' provided is the sense of being valued." presented in an imaginative and stimulating way. Several prize winners say that ignorance of industry and how it works is a major cause of the rejection of industry by their contemporaries. I agree with them. Many prizewinners asree that the impression of industry conveyed by the press and television is unnecessarily negative (although Deborah Jaffey is careful to point out that this may be partly due to society's own prediliction for the This is repeatedly cited as having a damaging effect on young people's attitude to industry.

Against this background, the Guardian's initiative in organising this competition in collaboration with the Industrial Society is LAST YEAR, in a Guardian essay competition, school students registered a two to one vote of no confidence in industry as a place to work. This' in answer to a somewhat different question, there is just as emphatic a thumbs down on industry's image and what it is doing to improve it. Asked what can be done to make industry a more attractive career, why industry fails to attract bright youag people, and what could ddne to improve its image, fifth and sixth formers say the image is had and that industry is not doing nearly enough about it. Some of their teachers invited to write on the same theme, agree. As ever, one has to be care-ful about reading too much into a relatively small sample.

There were fewer entrants than last year, but the sipread was quite convincing. There were almost exactly as many girls as boys, and they covered the country from Cornwall, Devon, South Wales, and Anglesey to Kent, Essex and Norfolk, and from the London area through the Midlands, via Yorkshire and Lancashire to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Looking more closely at individual schools and addresses, however, one suspeots that the sample is overweighted with what one used to call grammar school types from leafy suburbia, only occasionally does one get a recognisable echo of industrial back streets. So it would possibly be misleading to attach too much weight to repetitious mention of dirt, grime, smoke, noise, conveyor belts and production lines. It would be more to the point, perhaps, to note the dog that did not bark no one seems to have noticed those prize-winning new town industrial estates gleaming with plate glass in their green lawn sites.

However, for a large number of these bright students this (to run a number of quotes together) is their gut feeling about industry; "a complete bore mindless monotony no place for the brighter leavers an insult to their intelligence no place for girls a job is a status symbol factory work only for the lower class Individuals will exaggerate, but Christopher Wade, who did a sixth form survey in Warwick, reports, Not one boy had anything good to say about British industry. The majority, thought the. last' place they would' consider when- choosing- a career." Why is this view so widely held? form survey in a Cardiff girls' school suggests the answer ignorance. "I don't know anything about industry. Not one out of 25 sixteen and seventeen year olds knew anything about it." Many of the students's essays, show that they are uneasy, about how little they know, they wonder if they are being misled.

They would like to more. But only a very few say outright that the dirt and monotony image is out of date. That industry nowadays can' he a clean, bright, lively, exciting, place. They ar quite decided, most of them, about why industry has a bad image. The publicity is bad, ill two senses.

First, the media present only the bad news, of strikes, and disasters, and of failing industry. In Chelmsford the image of British Leyland hangs over the whole concept of a job in industry." As seen from Reading and Winchester, the mass media are one of its worst enemies, giving the impression there Tosomeonelookingforan interesting career, the Dairy Industry offers tremendous scope- and varuM opportunities. Its not just concerned with cows and bottles of milk. It's also about engineering, sales, transport, science, administration and teaching, too. All of which offers a career with a future, a career with security.

The Dairy Industry isBritain's greatest food industry, with a daily Not only is there an enormous choice of careers, but also an enormous choice in any given field. Thereareopeningsforalmost everyone, from secondary 'school-leaversto university graduates. Many dairy organisations run comprehensive training schemes for all levels of staff. And there are-opportunities for specialised education too: first degree and Williams Glyn's believes technology should improve personal service, not replace it Leslie Huckfield particularly praiseworthy. I am always pleased to see any attempt to break out of this vicious circle of gloom, bad publicity and further despondency.

This steady drip, drip, drip of bad publicity saps the strength and enthusiasm of our people, and worse still, those abroad read our press and take it very seriously. On the education side, several prize winners recommend that the industrial relevance of subjects taught in school should be brought out considerably more than at present. Dr Karen Worgan makes the valid point that education should involve learning about our society, not just the sociological and historical aspects but also the practical ones. This would include the vital education about industry today, how it Tift functions, what people do and how they do it." Coming as it does, from a teacher and not from an industrialist, I find that comment part-ticularly encouraging. To have more of our able young people entering industry is in everyone's interest.

People in industry do a job that is of vital importance to the well-being of our whole society. They help create the wealth which is the life blood of the community and which provides the resources for, among many other things, our schools, hospitals and social services. Without their contribution to the economy, our living standards would fall and the public services would have to be substantially curtailed. But if industry is to Frances Cairncross number of schemes schools in industry Link up THERE IS now a tremendous amount going on to tell schools about what industry does. In the past few years one of the fastest growing industries in Britain has been finding ways of linking up schools with local firms.

Perhaps the two best-known projects are Understanding British Industry and the Schools Council Industry Project. Understanding British Industry UBI for short was set up a couple of years ago by the Confederation of British Industry. It had a rather wobbly start, and is only now moving into top gear. It has a large budget of over 1 million, and a "resource centre" in Oxford which provides back-up material to a team of regional officers. It has started up some lively projects, particularly in the West Midlands, where its regional officer has persuaded a company' personnel director and a deputy head teacher to swop jobs, and where local firms have agreed to employ a number of senior schoolteachers for a year.

The Schools Council Industry Project has grown out of the schools, rather than out of industry. It has been trying to establish links between local firms and schools, working through a network of regional officers. But it has also taken an interest in school curricula. In some areas the project has been involved in helping schools. to design CS1E "mode three" exams exams- for which the school both writes the syllabus and sets the examination, under the control of the local examining board.

Then there is the Link Scheme. It has been going now for over ten years. It was set up by ICI in the North-east, and taken up by the Chemical Industries Association. A number of large companies now belong to it British Petroleum is probably the most active. A school which joins the scheme nominates a Link Teacher, and he is put directly in touch with a Link Officer in a local company.

The two cooperate to arrange anything from a talk by the head- of the company's research division to the sixth form science club to a school for the general studies class. The scheme's main problem at the moment seems to be a shortage of medium sized and smaller Arms perhaps because the Link Officer has to give up ten hours of company time, a term and in practice often gives up rather more in order to participate. The Industrial Society's own series of Challenge of Industry conferences has now aw. nave a responsibility to give them the esteem they deserve wihen they have taken up an industrial career. One of the prizewinners, Alex Day, says, I want to join in the creation of the nation's wealth and when people say Did you become a doctor then I want to say with equal pride, No, I work for looks at the growing designed to interest been running for fifteen years.

The society tries to get younger people in industry and in the trade unions to speak at its conferences, which are aimed mainly at sixth formers. The theory is that younger speakers are more likely to be on the same wave-length as their audience. A different approach is taken by Young Enterprise, a project based on an American idea. School students are encouraged, with advice from a local firm, to set up their own production line, making something very simple coat-hangers, perhaps, or selling seedlings. The factory runs for a school year, operating on capital raised by the students by selling shares to parents and -gullible friends.

Young Enterprise schemes have occasionally managed to clear a profit of as much as 60 from nine months' operations. The total list of national schemes runs to nearly 40. Besides them there are a lot of more specialised schemes, some of which are thinly disguised recruitment drives, but others are designed to improve the teaching of particular disciplines in schools. The Institutions of Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineers support a project called Opening Windows on Engineering, which trains engineers to visit schools and talk to students for a day at a time. Some of the best schemes of all, though, are run on a local basis.

In about 25 counties there is now a resource directory catalogue of which local firms will do what for schools. With a great many local firms it is simply a question of waiting for an enthusiastic teacher to ask. ADDRESSES Understanding British Industry. Director John Nisbet, Sun Alliance House, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford. Schools Council industry Project.

Martin Lightfoot, Director of SCIP, Schools Council, Great Portland Street, London Wl. The' Link Scheme, national schools coordinator ds Barbara Haines, Polytechnic of" North London, Holloway Road, London N7. The Industrial Society, Peter Runge House, 3 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1. Opening Windows on Engineering run by Mr Kevin Walton, The Knell, Upper Colwall, near Malvern, Worcestershire. Young Enterprise, 36-47 Old Bond Street, London WL post-graduafeunlversitteoursK in food and dairy science; Higher and Ordinary National Diploma courses in food and dairy technology; City and Guilds courses at various centres throughout the country; Block Release coursesfor junior process and laboratory staff.

The choice lies between part-time courses and anything up to four-year university courses. And for students of outstanding potential, Dairy Industry Special Grants are availablefor certain courses. So whether you're thinking ofyourownfutureoradvising ot hersabout theirs, a career with the Dairy Industry is well worth considering. For further information please write toThe Education Department, National Dairy Council, The National Dairy Centre, John Princes Street, London W1M OAR. Some of the other small differences that add up to a big difference 1 Free Banking Personal customers who keep 50 in a current account pay no bank charges.

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