One of our industries big ambitions is to reach the desks of teachers, to get onto the radar of those who are educating and advising young minds about their career choices and further options for study. It’s a difficult one as its extremely hard to actually connect with schools in a systematic way and to find a way that gains youngsters attention and retains their interest.
The National Farmers Union (NFU) are running a campaign to raise the profile of agricultural engineering in schools. It’s a perfect fit for raising the profile of our sector through a tried and tested initiative, which reaches out to a willing audience of eager-to-learn schools.
The NFU, in partnership with the University of Manchester’s Science and Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub (SEERIH) are devising a series of classroom lessons along the lines: ‘Engineering Educates: Farmvention Challenge.’ the aims are to reconnect children aged between 7-14 with how their food is grown and the people involved in its production, with a particular focus on how engineers and farmers collaborate to feed the nation. SEERIH, as the experts in writing content for STEM based subjects for the different school ages will create different engineering challenges to be delivered to classrooms by science and engineering teachers, in accordance with age. There will be a challenge which will be either technology or engineering based after a series of lessons and as a concept that has been successfully rolled out before, the programme is already over-subscribed with eighty schools wanting to take part from three main cities in the UK.
We now need you! We need you to nominate a role model from your company, for two two-hours sessions max, who will inspire the next generation
We need you as dealers, engineers, and technicians to buy-in to this and help us build a better profile of our industry, to reach the young audiences that do not connect with us or our industry. The NFU are matching the eighty schools with eighty farmers, and they need the eighty technicians, apprentices, students, and ambassadors….
We are asking our dealers to nominate role models who will spend an hour or so chatting to a group of children who are doing the course and completing their projects. We would like you to chat about what it’s like to be an engineer and to inspire the next generation into becoming agricultural engineers. There will be a two-hour coaching session for ambassadors and then a school visit in person or on-line.
Think of the bigger picture
We have all got to think of the bigger picture here. This is not necessarily going to find an apprentice in your area at this moment in time. What it could do, however, is inspire the next set of interested engineers to join us in our sector, as opposed to automotive or any other. It will start to bring our world of innovation, technology, sustainability, the environment to a whole new and receptive audience.
This is a notice to all manufacturers, dealers, engineers, and technicians. Please step forward!!
Please get in touch and get your technicians to sign up: https://forms.office.com/r/RdTgnZggkL
Or if you’d like further information, please contact Joshua.payne@nfu.org.uk
