Forth Valley College signs up record number of female engineers

Forth Valley College has registered a record number of female engineering modern apprentices (MAs) for an academic year, with 19 signing up for courses which cover sectors such as welding and fabrication, instrumentation, power distribution and mechanical engineering.

Forth Valley College hopes its record intake of female engineering apprentices will inspire more women to join the sector. Picture: Contributed

MAs will spend their first year at college while being employed by companies such as Petrofac, ScotRail, and Scottish Power.

Principal Ken Thomson said: “It is great to see a record number of women engineering modern apprentices start with us this year and we hope this will inspire even more women to think about engineering as a career.

“As a college we have been taking this message – which runs in parallel to the Scottish Government’s gender strategy - to schools and across the wider community for many years and we know our industry partners have been doing the same. We hope intakes like this will become the norm from now on.”

Chris Claydon, chief executive of ECITB, the statutory skills body for the engineering construction industry which sponsors MA training on behalf of partner companies, added: “If we are to meet the skills needs of the industry it is vital that we have a diverse workforce, but women make up just nine percent of engineers in the UK and only three percent of the workforce on the average engineering construction site. So we know we need to do more make engineering jobs more appealing to women.”