Summary of the solution: Covid-19 has revealed the precarious condition of UK manufacturing. We can improve this by long-term investment in our young people, changing their attitude about making goods for the world.
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The remedy is not quick (it may take a generation or two), but a start must be made. It has to begin with a realignment of the attitude of the British people to the manufacturing skills.
It can only gather momentum by giving youngsters an excitement about manufacturing. Then we must give them the opportunity to understand how they can play their part.
The excitement
… will come through schools and social media. The schools curriculum must offer to all children an
extended course and qualifications in industrial manufacture. This is entirely different from craft
skills.
Teachers must be retrained to see this as an exciting imperative. (I expect that most teachers have yet
to catch the excitement and challenge of a career in manufacture.)
Specialist teachers may have to be employed.
The courses in manufacture can draw on and interface with most other current school courses in the
sciences, arts and humanities.
There must be class visits to factories and product design offices; talks from industrialists will be a
key part, to win the hearts of dynamic young people. The students can be enthused by hearing:
‘What challenges did we overcome in developing and making this product?’
‘Why do I enjoy this work?’
‘How far ahead are we designing new products?’
‘Quite why did we succeed?’
‘How did we finance it?’
‘How do we manage our workforce?’
The government must put onto the internet – especially social media – material for students with immediate relevance to their courses, but also to link them further and deeper into the world of manufacture.
The government and/or major charities and private companies can sponsor awards and significant publicity for firms who excel in creating attractive and effective material to support teaching these courses.
There can be awards, too, for TV programmes and series that show the challenges and attractions of solving problems in manufacturing.
The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise must be trumpeted in every school, with age-appropriate material to enable the students (and teachers) to appreciate and to celebrate the great achievements of the winners. The students can then appreciate what has been required to solve complex problems. They can also see the rewards: employment and the satisfaction of a job well done.
A themed emphasis for schools based on manufacture will also draw the attention and commitment of many young people who currently don’t see the relevance of what is presented to them in school. But this isn’t just for the disenchanted: this is also for the brightest and best. Some youngsters might be drawn into operating machines, some into sales or purchasing, some into design: there’s a niche for everyone. But throughout the approach to our young people – the courses, the media, the teaching – there has to be an insistent demand for quality and a high call to perform well, with imagination, creativity, enthusiasm and care, never assuming that today will be like yesterday. This is no easy option for slackers; this is important fulfilling work for all.
Imagine:
… if you want to be good at sales or purchasing, you had better work hard at your foreign languages.
… If you want to design a product for us, you had better get the relevant sciences and maths under your belt.
… If you want to drive that vehicle, we have to know that you’re a very careful and responsible person. … if you want to work here, you will have to be flexible, because the markets and the technology are changing all the time.
If you’ve learnt those lessons, there will be good, challenging alternative manufacturing work for your skills nearby when your employer has to down-size for a while, as has happened to Rolls Royce Aerospace.
The opportunity to take part will come when our most able and ambitious young leaders find that there’s real money and fulfilment to be had this way, with a skilled work force available and a favourable wind from government and social attitudes.
Major industrial and social charities should be encouraged to sponsor schools, media channels including TV programmes, and apprenticeships that build, in the minds of young people, the honour and excitement of taking your place in a manufacturing enterprise.
Sixth Form and Technical colleges can be sited in industrial estates, with some classrooms within factory premises, so that their courses can be based on the real and current issues of that factory.
Major tracts of land – much of it from blighted historic industrial activity where we lost our way – must be made available with encouragement from the government. That will be a signal that the UK is going into this seriously, and that you can step forward with confidence. There is plenty of this land: I’ve seen it in Essex, Middlesbrough. Port Talbot and Belfast. There are, no doubt, comparable sites in all regions, but especially in the North. It will be particularly gratifying to see the North rising again in manufacture for export.
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Some say the UK can’t compete with low-cost countries. Not true! James Dyson said that he relocated to the Far East not because wages were lower, but because that’s where he could find the skills base he needed. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy are not low-cost economies, but we regularly buy their quality goods. There is no cost-reason UK cannot compete well. We just need to change our attitude to manufacturing.
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