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.