Title: Britain is facing a “retirement cliff” in engineering - BBC News
Headings: Britain is facing a “retirement cliff” in engineering
Britain is facing a “retirement cliff” in engineering
Business embassy
Immigration debate
Victorian ambition
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Content: As well as engineering, and fears about skills, the discussions ranged widely. How does Britain create real commercial value from the invention of graphene at Manchester University? How does Britain move from a nation too reliant on financial services to one more balanced both by sector and - given this event is happening in north-west England - by geography. Sir Terry Leahy, the former chief executive of Tesco who spoke today, said that when he was growing up in Liverpool in the 1970s all the talk was of decline. That has now changed. But it is skills that are at the heart of much of this. Just as Sir James Dyson and Lord Bamford, the chairman of JCB, have argued before, the British education system appears to struggle to enthuse young people about technically-based degrees. Women, in particular, are woefully under-represented. Immigration debate
Lord Livingston, the trade secretary and former chief executive of BT, said that there was an obvious signal about the differing weight the education system gives to degrees as opposed to, for example, apprenticeships. Students going to university to do a degree make up part of the school's league table results.