Electronics Skills Foundation established to head off 'growing crisis'

According to SEMTA's Darren Race, the industry needs 17,400 additional engineers by 2014. Working out how to achieve that goal was one of the discussion topics at the UK Electronics Alliance's Second Annual Conference on Skills, held recently in London. The event brought together a range of interested parties in an attempt to improve future recruitment prospects. Setting the scene was Indro Mukerjee (pictured), chair of C-MAC Technology. He said the industry faced a number of challenges. "The UK is a leading design centre," he claimed, "and manufacturing hasn't gone away. So we need to grow our talent base through training that is fit for purpose and by attracting good people to come into the industry to take good jobs." But he accepted that the skills issue was too broad to address as a whole. "We must focus on specifics," he counselled. Speaking on behalf of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), Verni Tannam, a team leader in the sector skills unit, said: "Industry input has helped to shift BIS' emphasis towards higher level skills. There is now clear recognition of the need to prioritise resources and have a stronger STEM focus. The ability of industry to influence provision means there has been some real 'joining up', but there's more to be done. "A lot depends on the sector," she added. "It needs to articulate its needs and to feedback to us." The National Microelectronics Institute (NMI) used the occasion to announce the UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF), which aims to increase and sustain the supply of industry ready graduate engineers and to boost career take up in the sector. NMI chief executive Derek Boyd said: "The UKESF's goal is to ensure that the sector is supplied with the quality of talent to enable it to continue to be innovative, competitive and able to provide high value jobs to support the wider economy." UKESF is a collaboration of public bodies, private companies and leading UK universities. Founding partners include NMI, BIS and SEMTA, as well as industry partners ARM, CSR, Dialog Semiconductor and Imagination Technologies. Founder universities are Bristol, Edinburgh, Imperial College, Southampton and Surrey. Mukerjee added: "The UKESF is all about upskilling and getting new people into the industry. The NMI initiative is about vision and action, but it's also a collaboration between disparate bodies who have come together to meet the challenge." Keith Hodgkinson, director of the Electronics and IT Services Unit at BIS, noted: "BIS understands the importance of electronics, both as an enabler and as a way of addressing societal challenges." Meanwhile, the UK Electronics Alliance (UKEA) has created www.electronicsskillsmap.com, a website designed to provide clearer signposting to skills provision in the UK. "When it comes to skills provision, the number of organisations involved can seem bewildering," said Alliance executive Roger Rogowski, "as can the number of schemes and activities." The site, which will capture a range of information sources, has five main elements: awards; young people; recruitment; developing the workforce; and collaborating with universities. The site is planned to go live at the end of February.