The IET Berkshire local network organised a "Promote Engineering" session with the Local MP, Matt Rodda at the UTC Reading on Friday the 9th of February. The IET Berkshire Chairman, Dr. Abhaya Sumanasena chaired the session and it was organised by the IET Berkshire Committee member Dr. Anthony Bardos. The event was attended by a tech leaders, variety of industry experts, ambassadors and educators across the Berkshire area. The main objective of the meeting was to introduce us to Matt and inform him about the various voluntary activities happening in the Berkshire area. The key discussion point of this meeting was "how to get more people into Engineering and Technology (in particular more women)"

Five key points came from the discussion was:

1. Berkshire is in a technology hotspot. So we should make use of the offering from the surrounding business

• We need a better and a simplified definition to the key questions such as:
  
  1. What is engineering? i.e. engineers make things better
  
  
• What engineers do?

• Recruit teachers who knows about engineering and provide necessary support i.e. training, affordable housing etc Inspirational teacher can make a big difference to children on what they like.

• Consider STEM subjects at the primary school level with the subjects such as sound and light etc. Exposing to the technologies they can use will help. At that age the gender gap is minimum. It needs to be included in the curriculum.

• Consider Art can add value to STEM subjects since Art brings creativity So STEM becomes STEAM

The takeaways from the discussion were:

1. One thing common about participated tech groups is that all of us a doing similar things. i.e. volunteer promote engineering within the individual tech group. As the next step we will understand the options of collaborating at a wider scale and see where we can help each other in our activities.

• Matt also Offered his full support for this initiative and offered to put us in touch with his colleagues in the education sectors. We will explore how to make the best of this offer.

• We will also try to reach the other tech communities we couldn't react yet.

If you would like to join this initiative, or have any suggestions please contact the IET Chair of the Berkshire LN, Dr. Abhaya Sumanasena (abhaya@theiet.org)