Pictured above: Martyn Hale, a director of HME
Technology
Britain's schools need to keep design and technology (D&T)
to the fore if manufacturing and innovation are to take the country
forward, a Midlands expert has warned.
Martyn Hale, a director of HME Technology, based at Saxon Park
in Bromsgrove, said a downgrading of D&T would be
"disastrous".
His comments came as the Government's review of the national
curriculum in schools continues, with only English, maths, science
and physical education guaranteed to remain.
Currently D&T, art and design, citizenship, geography,
history, information and communication technology, modern foreign
languages and music also have national curriculum status.
Both the National Association of Advisers and Inspectors in
Design and Technology (NAAIDT) and the Design and Technology
Association (DATA) have been campaigning to retain D&T.
Mr Hale, whose business is one of the sponsors of the NAAIDT
national conference, said: "We believe it is absolutely vital to
retain D&T as part of the national curriculum rather than allow
it to become optional.
"I take no issue with the Government's decision to mount this
review. However, it is vitally important for our nation's future
that design and technology are retained as a core subject.
"D&T should be an essential part of every school's
curriculum.
"We have a world leading design industry and it is critical we
continue to re-build our economy by majoring on our strengths.
"Our standing in D&T is recognised at home and abroad and
the work done in our schools is one of the building blocks for this
success.
"If we are to remain competitive in a global economy, with many
challengers, then we need to develop our future design
capability.
"Dropping D&T from the national curriculum would be a big
mistake."
HME Technology was founded in 1984 and is the leading supplier
and installer of design and technology and science equipment for
schools. It has won a string of orders at home and abroad.
Its range of products include forges, brazing hearths, furnaces,
welding tables, fume extraction systems, kilns, woodworking
equipment, wood dust extraction systems, metal finishing and CNC
machines. It also supplies fume cupboards and ventilation systems
for science departments.
The campaign to save D&T has secured some high profile
supporters including entrepreneur James Dyson.
He recently highlighted how design and technology is often a
child's only exposure to engineering - a vital component of the
West Midlands economy. Dyson bemoaned how D&T suffered from a
bad reputation, being wrongly seen as a soft subject. But he called
for a compromise, with a new slim-lined syllabus to focus on
product design and engineering.
Mr Hale said: "With people as eminent as James Dyson behind
this, hopefully the Government will sit up and take notice.
"It is only with this Government has a new realisation fully
dawned that manufacturing, engineering and design must play a major
part in our economy going forward. Post the banking collapse, the
economy needs to be better balanced.
"It would be a tragedy then, having recognised the importance of
the sector, D&T were to be downgraded in our schools.
"There is no logic to that at all."
A decision is expected later this year and the proposed new
national curriculum put out for consultation next year.
It would be adopted by schools in 2014.