Curriculum Programme

D&T issues

Becoming an Engineering College - a wicked problem

www.specialistschools.org.uk

The Specialist Schools Trust has recently published a report by David Barlex which highlights the challenges facing schools setting out to become Engineering Colleges. The report is available from the Trust's web site.

The report points out that reformulating the curriculum of a school into something new is an exceptionally demanding undertaking. David describes the development of a curriculum for an engineering college as a wicked problem. Only by becoming an engineering college, he argues, can a school discover what it means to be one.

David and his team visited a number of existing Engineering Colleges to gather evidence for the report. It turns out that the current curriculum and its assessment is a big barrier to the type of interaction between maths, science and D&T that should lie at the heart of the curriculum of an Engineering College.

Becoming a true Engineering College is a long term project that will take 5 - 10 years. The colleges need to develop a shared understanding of the term 'engineering' and collaborate to create the professional knowledge needed for success.

One of the challenges to to find ways of including within the mainstream curriculum, the highly successful, interdisciplinary activities that now take place in the informal curriculum.

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