A Future in Electronics
The world of electronics and information technology is always exciting and always changing. Microprocessors, computer-aided design and manufacture, robotics, and the prospect of a “fifth generation” of computers—all these developments present our country with a challenging opportunity. If we seize it, we can compete in the markets of the world—including the market here in Britain—create new jobs and increase our prosperity. If we fail, Britain can only slip back.
Success depends crucially on attitudes and skills.
From management we need an enterprising and innovative attitude, and a willingness to back new ideas and put them into production. From the workforce, we need a positive attitude to change and new techology, as welcome allies in creating new and better paid jobs.
Sticking with the old ways, when industry and commerce in other countries are changing theirs, is a recipe for decline and unemployment.
The skills required are many and various. Conceiving new products and bringing them to the market; designing new equipment at the forefront of development; manufacturing it efficiently and economically.
New technology, though, is not just for specialists—people at all levels in industry and commerce need to appreciate what it can do, and acquire the facility to use it. [end p1]
So we need to make sure that young people in particular get the education and training in new technology that they need. Government, the education service, industry and commerce all have a part to play. Much is being done. Links have been built up. But a stronger partnership must be forged.
I was most encouraged that the Report of the Committee on IT skills shortages, chaired by John Butcher, included proposals by industrial members that industry might consider offering consultancies to staff in further and higher education, as well as providing the latest equipment, and making available some of their own best people for part-time teaching.
I hope that employers will do more to explain to all our young people—boys and girls—the attractions of working in IT; and that they will make clear their needs as employers in a dialogue with the schools, colleges, universities and polytechnics.
The Government has encouraged the educational world to respond to industry's needs:
The Microelectronics Education Programme (MEP) and the ‘Micros in Schools’ schemes are helping to prepare pupils for life with the new technologies.
There is an important IT element in new developments such as the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) and the Certificate of Pre-Vocational Education (CPVE), and the new qualifications at 17-plus. The TVEI is introducing new ways of giving 14 to 18-year-olds in schools and colleges a good education with a practical and technical slant. [end p2]
The responsiveness and flexibility of further education colleges and new local needs is being encouraged by pilot College-Employer Links Projects.
The £38 million IT initiative in higher education will provide 5,000 extra electronic engineering and computer science student places by 1985-86, an increase of some 20 per cent over previous plans.
The shift in emphasis in both universities and local authority higher education towards providing more places in computing, engineering and other subjects of interest to employers.
The opportunities for making a career in electronics and information technology are there. I hope that increasing numbers of young people will think seriously about making the most of them—for Britain's benefit as well as their own.
Margaret Thatcher