Member Article

SolutionsPT: Inspiring female engineers of the future

Cheadle-based industrial IT solutions specialist SolutionsPT hosted local primary and secondary school pupils as part of a ‘Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) for Girls’ day, designed to encourage more girls to pursue STEM subjects and careers.

Twenty girls from Years 4 to 10 from local schools, including Marple Hall, St Mary’s and Bradshaw Hall Primary, took part in a series of fun challenges, using engineering concepts to build freestanding structures and even designing and building their own Batak machines which they later competed on.

The girls were introduced to female engineers working at SolutionsPT and shown the types of careers and salaries they could pursue with STEM qualifications. The pupils were also introduced to concepts such as cloud computing and control system architectures.

SolutionsPT plans to run further STEM days with local schools and colleges throughout the year.

Sue Roche, General Manager at SolutionsPT, said: “Engineering and technology plays a vital role in our economy and there’s increasing demand for highly skilled STEM candidates. Despite this, only 2% of A levels last year were in subjects such as Computing or ICT. This figure is even lower amongst girls and there remains a view that engineering and technology roles are only for boys. We want to challenge this outdated view and show girls the range of interesting, well paid and fulfilling careers they could have access to if they pursue STEM subjects.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Colin Batchelor .