Developing Engineers; The Case of Electronics Education in English Schools

Electronics has been a part of the English school curriculum since the late 1970s, being taught variously under the auspices of Physics, General Science, Technology and, since 1995, as a part of the statutory National Curriculum for Design & Technology. The newly developed national Diploma in Engineering also includes elements of electronics. This paper briefly describes this history and its impact on the way electronics has been and is conceived in English schools. Like other physical science subjects, electronics in school suffers from a lack of specialist teachers and the perception that is 'hard'. Since 1998 the Electronics in Schools Strategy (EiSS), with funding from a range of agencies, including the English Government departments of Trade & Industry and Education & Science and the Institute of Electrical Engineers (now the Institute of Engineering and Technology), has been engaged in supporting the national development of electronics in schools. Tactics employed by EiSS include school-based curriculum development, the development of an extensive website of support for both teachers of electronics and their pupils, training trainers who are funded to offer substantial free training to schools and the development of regional EiSS hubs with a brief and funding to support local initiatives that will support electronics teaching and learning in schools. Throughout the life of EiSS there has been a focus on the evaluation of effectiveness measured by the degree of impact on teachers and pupils and implementation of good quality electronics in schools. This paper summarises the findings of this evaluation effort. At the same time a wealth of ICT-based educational electronics resources has been developed by UK companies including high quality PCB CAD and CAM, pupil-friendly yet powerful electronics simulation and straightforward approaches to the inclusion of microcontroller and communications technologies into pupil projects. Electronics-focussed work in schools has also been influenced by other developments going on in the wider subject of Design & Technology such as thinking about how to foster creativity in pupils, work to develop more sustainable approaches to pupils' designing and making and attempts to get pupils to design for the future, in particular through the Young Foresight initiative. The paper reflects on how the combination of high quality support for schools allied to excellent teaching resources has impacted on the approaches taken by teachers and the quality of pupils' work, illustrated with examples taken from schools involved with EiSS. The paper finishes by reflecting on the challenges and opportunities to electronics in education that are offered by developments in research and industrial electronics and presents some early findings from new curriculum development projects working in these areas.