10.09.2007
Engineers Ireland, the representative body of the engineering profession on the island of Ireland, has warmly welcomed the proposed Queen’s University Belfast initiative of offering students taking up courses in science, maths, technology and engineering an annual £1,000 bursary to encourage a greater uptake of these courses.
The Director General of Engineers Ireland, Mr. John Power, said that similar or related types of initiatives should also be strongly considered in third level colleges in the Republic.
“For a number of years, Engineers Ireland has campaigned for initiatives to encourage a greater uptake of science and engineering courses at third level. We have previously suggested bonus CAO points for maths in the Leaving Cert. to encourage students to take up the subject and our comments in the wake of the recent Leaving Cert results regarding this initiative were positively received by Minister Hanafin.”
Mr. Power also pointed out that a recent study undertaken by Engineers Ireland and the Irish Academy of Engineers, called Engineering a Knowledge Island 2020, found that if the island of Ireland is to become a top five global economy by 2020 there needs to be a year on year increase of 7% in the number of engineering graduates.
“We have seen a succession of expert reports highlighting that Ireland’s continued economic success is vitally dependent on our ability to move up the value chain, attracting more R&D based projects to our shores, and achieving what has been termed a Knowledge Economy.
“We will not achieve this key goal unless we are able to turn out significantly more science, technology and engineering graduates, and innovative measures like the Queen’s University proposal, can help do that. Here in the Republic, we simply have to get more students taking maths and science subjects in the Leaving Cert. and also achieving good results in those subjects”, Mr. Power added.
Referring to the upcoming review by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment of the Leaving Certificate maths syllabus, he said Engineers Ireland would “welcome any changes to the curriculum if they encourage students to study higher level maths and create a core relationship between the subject, real life and in turn careers in engineering.”
To also address this challenge Engineers Ireland’s developed the STEPS to engineering programme, which encourages young people to consider a career in engineering. This programme features up to 1,500 events annually targeting over 65,000 primary and secondary students nationwide.
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Related contacts
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Engineers Ireland
22 Clyde Road
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 6684341
Fax: +353 1 6685508 |
Engineers Ireland Info Email
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Source: Engineers Ireland Website- 06/09/07 |
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