Young people in developed nations recognise the contribution that science and technology make to society and acknowledge their importance now and in the future, yet few view their study as leading to interesting careers. Some countries are taking action to raise interest in science, technologies, engineering and mathematics and increase the number of students studying these subjects. One of the barriers to young people pursuing engineering is their limited or distorted perception of it - they associate it only with building and fixing things. Young people rarely encounter engineers, unlike other professionals, engineering has little or no advocacy in the media and there are few opportunities to experience engineering. Many of the pupils surveyed at the start of Engineering the Future, a three year EPSRC-funded project, wrote “don’t know what engineering is” and/or “would like more information”. This paper reports on work with researchers, policy makers and practitioners in Scotland to develop a sustainable model of activities and interactions that develops pupils’ understanding of the nature of engineering, embeds experiences of engineering within the school classroom and curriculum and promotes engineering as a career. After learning about engineering through the activities the pupils’ perceptions had improved. Almost all considered it important that young people know about engineering, because it is an essential part of everyday life and, in the words of one pupil - “If we know more about it, our minds wouldn’t stay closed to it. We would maybe take it up.”

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an educational program. Engineering the Future (EtF) sought to promote a permanent, informed awareness within the school community of high-level engineering by embedding key aspects of engineering within the education curriculum. The Scottish education system is used for a case study in which a range of pilot high schools worked in close partnership with two university engineering departments. The study focuses on electronic/electrical engineering (EEE), a technically challenging area, which reflects many of the problems that are intrinsic to modern society. In so doing, the work also sought to support and refine the transition from the school environment to higher education engineering courses. EtF is founded on research into transformational change and describes the findings of a three-year program that sought to develop sustainable and transferable means of encouraging school students to study engineering at university. The authors describe the conditions needed to support sustainable developments. They also provide an analysis of inevitable constraints and suggest strategies to address these issues. The paper concludes that sustainable long-term promotion of engineering within schools to support the transition to university is possible if certain conditions are fulfilled. These conditions include the use of a model that facilitates partnerships among researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners in all sectors. Building such essential linkages is often challenging, but this effort is necessary if changes in engineering education are to be realized and sustained.