Andy,

I just had a chance to listen to the radio programme on the deaths of William Huskisson in 1830 and of Elaine Herzberg last month and I can share your concerns about how they report it. The idea that Huskisson's death, where people were completely unfamiliar with steam locomotives, is similar to Elaine Herzberg's death where she was familiar with automobiles and should have known to look for a hazard, is somewhat strange, particularly as Huskisson's death was a chain of errors (at least according to Wikipedia, but then they ascribe the Rocket to George Stephenson when it was actually his son Robert's engineering works 'Robert Stephenson and Company' who built it). I think that there is a lot of PR in the radio programme with driverless car developers wanting to demonstrate that they are on top of any problems and it won't happen again. What they really mean is they have mitigation in place against all the problems they foresee, which normally means that they haven't done a safety case with a structured risk assessment to identify less obvious potential hazards, else they would have said so.

The Rocket was not fitted with brakes as they said in the programme, but they didn't say that it could stop by reversing the drive, which proved to be insufficiently effective for William Huskisson. They pointed out that after this all locomotive engines were fitted with brakes with the implication that this prevented future deaths. What they didn't mention was that a few years later in Ireland a train full of passengers found the load (i.e. the weight of the passengers) was too great for it to get up a hill and it ended up stopped three quarters of the way up. They decided to uncouple half the carriages so they could take a half load to the top of the hill then come back for the other half of the carriages. Unfortunately the brakes were on the locomotive, not the carriages so as soon as they uncoupled the rear 50% of the carriages they started downhill at an increasing rate, and at the bottom of the hill met the next train coming at its full speed with consequences you can imagine. When I was told about this I was informed it still remained the worst rail tragedy in Britain. Possibly not what they want people to think about when the next stage after single driverless cars is convoys of driverless vehicles.

Alasdair

Yes, that was pretty much exactly my thoughts - there was one point where a statement was made along the lines of "we're proving the safety of these cars by doing lots of testing in controlled areas and then on roads" which caused me to actually shout at the radio "you don't prove safety by testing!". But of course that particular speaker was a spokesperson who would have been feed with PR digested material - so it's not to say there wasn't actually solid safety work underlying it. It's just frustrating - showing a film of a car avoiding something appears to, as you say, show they are on top of the safety and actually of course does nothing of the kind.


I think I've told you before about an ex-colleague of mine, a fantastic ISA, whose neat response to any field data was "yes, that proves it hasn't failed yet".


Re the Armagh disaster, here's a bit of bang up to date scary bedtime reading: https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-01-2018-runaway-of-a-maintenance-train-near-markinch

The diagram in the full report that shows the distance the train oscillated over before finally coming to a standstill is one of the more disturbing things I've seen for a while. The cause of the incident is fascinating. It shows that what we've always considered to be the fail-safe braking system - brought in after Armagh type incidents - can still be implemented with common-mode engineering issues.


On a lighter bedtime note: My family are fortunately quite used to me shouting at the radio or television - my daughter frequently reminds me of a couple of dramas we were watching where people were shown on UK railway tracks in yellow high vis gear!!! (I think one was Doctor Who and one was Sherlock, both of which I would have thought it is reasoanble to expect to be 100% factually accurate  ) Still they are very understanding, and don't suggest (yet) that I should get a life or be put in a home...


Cheers,


Andy

Andy Millar:

KS3 is a difficult time, it really is that transition you sort of mention from the fun and random inquiry of KS2 to the serious exam time of KS4. I do agree that this is where schools could (given the resources) put more effort into a) transitioning to adult social skills (they do try) and b) learning how to learn. I suspect many teachers would agree with me here. Really proactive headteachers do manage to achieve this in the KS3 curriculum.

KS3 is secondary school age and secondary schools do not teach social skills because it does not fit into the National Curriculum. The timetabled lessons are all academic subjects. The closest is a subject called PHSE but really it's quite naff and predominantly focuses on contemporary teenage issues like drugs and relationships rather than social skills for life as an adult or life skills. I have encountered many parents who criticise secondary school for being too academic and therefore letting down children who come from dysfunctional families who are not in a good position to teach life skills and social skills to their children so even if they get good GCSE grades they are likely to leave school unprepared for life in the real world at an age where next to no help is available.


An interesting story that has stuck in my mind came from the mother of a child with Asperger syndrome who attended a middle school. She really praised the first / middle / high school system that operated in her local authority because middle schools have the resources of secondary schools and the more homely environment of primary schools so they are in a better position to support children with certain types of SEN than secondary schools are at KS3. The jump from first to middle then middle to high school is gentler than the jump from primary to secondary school, and 10 to 12 are usually the most difficult age for children with Asperger syndrome when it comes to school and relationship with their peer group. She said it was sad that governments since the 1980s had tried to eliminate middle schools in favour of primary and secondary schools and how they fail to even realise that difficulties children face at school, both academic and social, could be exacerbated by the structure and organisation of the primary and secondary school system.

Incidentally, I was chatting to someone recently who was training experienced engineers, who had one class with a group who again claimed they "knew it already" and "this is too slow". Sadly that same group also failed the end of course test rather spectacularly (and he was making the point that he'd seen this happen again and again). So it's not just school children who sometimes incorrectly misjudge their abilities! A minor case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Of course this isn't always the case, I didn't ever have a problem in school with finding lessons too slow (I would just read ahead in the textbook if the teacher was helping other people in the class) but I have had various training course - particularly repeat health and safety for certification - where sometimes the tutor is not, shall we say, sensitive to the groups needs. But my attitude is that learning to cope with such issues is part of Life - and put a constructive comment on the course review form!.

What you are referring to is exam technique. The truth is that students do not have to be geniuses, or even particularly clever, to get top grades in GCSE and A Level exams but what is essential is good exam technique. Large numbers of high ability students jeopardise grades because of poor exam technique. It's quite common for schools - even in recent years - to fail to go over past exam papers with their marking schemes or even make them available to students. A tutor told me all about this and how he spent more time with exam technique than with the course curriculum. He also said that many independent schools are very hot on teaching exam technique and it is the secret how they get better results than state schools which tend to just focus on teaching the course curriculum. Smart state school students download the past exam papers and their mark schemes from the exam board websites.

Andy Millar:


Regarding which social skills are essential to an effective engineering team (although not necessarily to all individual engineers within that team), I would start the list with effective communication (speaking, writing and - most of all - listening), appreciation of others expertise and correct positioning of your expertise with theirs, sensitivity to others circumstances - including the fact that these may change year-by-year, day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour, willingness to admit mistakes, willingness to accept others mistakes, mutual respect, assertiveness (there's huge amounts underneath this one - but lots about it around), empathy (ditto). I'm sure others could add to the list.

There may be plenty of truth to this but bear in mind that schools don’t actually teach social skills. Schools were set up to teach academic subjects. The National Curriculum is almost entirely academic. Governments look at schools only from an academic perspective. Almost every educational reform over the decades is academic. Students are only evaluated in academic subjects, not social skills, when it comes to grades. School league tables are only derived from performance in academic subjects.


It’s important not to conflate social skills with discipline and conformity which many schools over the decades have taken delight in dishing out.


Teachers do not always have particularly good or desirable social skills for a life outside of teaching. Over the decades it has been noted that the attitudes, appearance, and political views of a substantial number of teachers would not go down well in many commercial institutions. The days of ILEA infested to the core with raving Marxists may be gone but teaching is still very much a parallel world to corporate life. A high proportion of teachers have gone to school, then teacher training college, then back to school again without anything more than the merest glimpses of employment outside of school and the social skills that are required there as opposed to a school environment. Teachers often have tendency to socialise with teachers more often than non-teachers and marry other teachers. It is not unknown for teachers who enter teaching in middle age after a career in industry to be distrusted, or even bullied by, other teachers because of cliquiness or differences between their cultural mindsets due to the different pathways that they have taken in life.


Although it comes across as paradoxical, one common reason why parents choose to home educate is to provide their children with more time and better opportunities to learn social skills for life as an adult than if they attended school.

Andy Millar:


The vast majority of engineering is about teamwork, and all engineering is to deliver a product or service to a customer (even if they are another engineer!).

Schools are organised around individual learning rather than teamwork. To cite an extreme, but possibly half-true example, was that at a school attended by Roald Dahl, students had to do their prep individually in complete silence. Talking to another student was strictly prohibited and deemed by the prep supervisor as cheating – even if it was just asking for a spare pen nib - with the penalty of being caned by the headmaster. This contrasts very sharply with the American culture where kids tend to do their homework in groups. I read something at one time that the US is good when it comes to software development because of this childhood cultural phenomenon but no real efforts have been made at institutional level to encourage it on this side of the Atlantic. Schools run homework clubs but these exist more for students who won’t do their homework at home, have too many distractions at home, or need extra help and support, rather than to work in groups.


Even during the (golden?!) age of GCSE coursework in the 1990s and early 2000s exam boards implemented rules that all work must be a student’s own and not a result of a collaborative effort.


I argue myself that the school curriculum is mediocre when it comes to teamwork and it isn’t something high on the agendas of governments or academics when it comes to educational reform.

Hi Arran,

I don't like it when people make points and then walk away from a discussion, but I regret to say that's exactly what I'm going to have to do - I'm having a hectic fortnight in the day job and life in general.

Just one point, please note I fully agree that schools aren't doing everything they could to help develop social and team skills, so let's change them so they do.

Thanks,

Andy

Andy Millar:


 Now within in an engineering team it is perfectly possible to have engineers who are excellent at their technical subject but are unable to communicate that effectively (for whatever reason) to the wider organisation or to customers etc. However the engineering team as a whole must be able to communicate effectively within itself and the (internal or external) customers, and that only works if some members of the team have those skills listed above.

How exactly is good communication in job advertisements even defined? Do writers of job advertisements even know themselves or do they just include good communication because every other job advertisement includes it?


I’m dubious as to whether many secondary school English teachers are even capable of teaching technical writing because they have never studied it themselves or needed to do it as part of a career. Instead their knowledge is about Shakespeare and poetry. English literature is a compulsory GCSE subject (I think it’s recently become optional in Wales) despite it having minimal relevance to everyday life and employment. The GCSE English language syllabus doesn’t go into business English in any depth, and there doesn’t appear to be a strong lobby to create a business and technical English GCSE as an alternative to literature.


To the best of my knowledge, it’s extremely rare for an engineering graduate to have studied English language, or a similar subject, beyond GCSE level.

Arran,

As someone who has had to advertise and interview, I think that the job adverts did not say 'good communication' but rather something along the lines of 'able to communicate clearly in English'. The interviews were competency based (rather like the professional registration ones) and the candidates were judged on the examples of communication provided (the most obvious one being the interview). The reason for this was that, being an international organisation with English as a working language, communication had to be clear with non-native English speakers to ensure misunderstandings were avoided. This was not used as a means to rank the candidates, but if a candidate was deficient we would have to decide if their technical competence was sufficient that we wanted to employ them we were aware we would have to also make the effort to ensure their communication skills were improved to enable them to carry out their duties competently (there were one or two non-English speakers we took on with this approach, one of whom was Spanish who we set to work being mentored by a Geordie - perhaps not an ideal pairing).

On the issue of the study of English Language beyond GCSE, I was educated in Scotland where there aren't (or at least weren't in my time, it may have changed) separate English Language and English Literature exams, but rather one subject of English, which for me was compulsory at both O Grade and Higher Grade. You will probably find that most Scots have studied English to this level.

Regards,

Alasdair

Just to quickly reinforce Alasdair's post, examples of key points an interviewer will ideally look for where it comes to communication skills are:

1. Answering the question that was asked, hence showing listening skills

• Keeping to the point

• Being aware of the interviewer's body language etc, so knowing when to keep going and when they've said enough

• Using technical terms etc correctly and in context

• Being clear in the answers

• Where there is an interview panel, communicating with the whole panel (I've seen candidates get this spectacularly wrong where they wrongly guess who the key person is)

• Staying polite under pressure (again something candidates regularly get spectacularly wrong)

• Being able to be open when they don't know an answer 

These correlate pretty well to the communication skills required by engineers in practice. The other point, as Alasdair says, is to be able to communicate excellently with engineers whose first language is not your own. Major engineering projects tend to be multinational, and there is a whole separate way of communication to be learnt to write precisely and accurately in a way that can be understood by non-native speakers. I typically work on documents which have the range of words (technical terms excepted) and complexity of sentence structure that you might reasonably expect from roughly a 10 year old native English speaker. But within those constraints it's possible to be surprisingly precise. Some engineers find this frustrating, which I can totally understand, personally I find it really interesting - a bit like one of those challenges where you try to build a bridge out of pencils and rubber bands.


Cheers,


Andy

Nearly failed my secondary school. Almost failed Math. Didn't like studies at all. Came to me later when one of my electronic tutors in college encouraged me to learn some more about topic and to continue my education.