The Royal Academy of Engineering has produced a report effective ways to support the first year of delivery of the Diploma in Engineering.
The RAEng aims to: 'ensure an authentic engineering curriculum and particularly to ensure that it will meet the needs of engineering higher education as well as the needs of engineering employers. It has also acted as supporter and champion of the Southwark & Lambeth engineering diploma consortium which is the largest consortium to launch to date.'
It has undertaken a detailed study of the needs of teachers and lecturers within the 63 consortia delivering the diploma in its first year (the Gateway 1 consortia) in order to identify what support could be of most use to those practitioners.The conclusion drawn is "that there is an authentic engineering curriculum in place and examples of excellent delivery. However, there are issues emerging that will compromise the quality of delivery and hence outcomes in some consortia. There is time to correct these if action is taken quickly."
Through a process of semi-structured interview and discussion, the meetings show that a successful 14-19 Diploma in Engineering delivery will have:
- An expectation to deliver the full range of student outcomes
- Mechanisms in place to prevent teachers or lecturers having or choosing to deliver the diploma in isolation
- Schools and colleges are planning together
- Regular management meetings
- School and College managers that are supportive
- Line of Learning Leads who are responsive
- An awareness of the student experience
- Teachers with fluent knowledge of assessment foci
- Students producing products that look like engineering products
- Teachers and lecturers feeling and sounding authoritative
- Awarding bodies providing practical support to teachers and lecturers
- Schools and colleges are promoting active and independent learning
- The Additional and Specialist Learning is in place
- Local Education Authorities have strategies in place to accommodate growth in the numbers of students taking diplomas and the number of lines of learning offered
- Schools have recruitment protocols in place
- Local Education Authorities have strategies in place to coordinate employer engagement
- Students get enough timetabled hours to complete the course
- Teachers are able to contextualise the maths
This is a very brief summary of the report. The full report is available from the RAEng.
