The skills gap
As a proudly British independent aerospace and defence group, Marshall has been uniquely successful in calling together leaders from industry and academia to take collective action in the face of the increasingly severe global skills gap.
With extensive relationships across the public and private sectors, and over a century of experience in developing skilled employees through apprenticeships, we understand that fast-tracking young people into careers in aviation and engineering will require a coordinated approach across the entire industry.
We are committed to building a pipeline of extraordinary talent for industry, safeguarding the health and prosperity of the ecosystem in which we all operate, and ensuring our sector can continue to create extraordinary opportunities for young people.
Marshall Skills Summit
The Marshall Skills Summit event series was born from a shared understanding that the skills gap poses an existential threat to global aviation that cannot be resolved by employers and educators acting alone.
Featuring representatives from more than 30 organisations, Marshall Skills Summit has presented a much-needed rallying point for industry, academia and the public sector to come together and commit to working together to deliver sustainable long-term solutions for developing a pipeline of future talent.
Hosted by Marshall CEO Kathy Jenkins, first Skills Summit event in April 2023 was attended by a broad range of prominent industry figures from organisations including Airbus, BAE Systems, Boeing, Bombardier, British Airways, GKN, MBDA and Lockheed Martin who put their commercial allegiances aside and made a great deal of progress towards meaningful and tangible outcomes around the skills and labour shortage.
Since then, the Skills Summit has become a regular event series, with participants working together across multiple workstreams to develop a unified approach to STEM outreach.
Marshall Skills Summit 2023
Building industrywide outreach
Following the first two Marshall Skills Summit events, four industrywide working groups were established with the shared goal of developing a new and unified programme for aerospace and aviation outreach to schools.
Working together, these four workstreams have led to the creation of a combined, industry-led aerospace outreach programme, complete with a syllabus that covers KS1–KS4 of the UK educational system and can easily be incorporated into teachers’ core timetables nationwide.
The programme comprises several key elements:
Resource packs for teachers and industry
Skills Summit member organisations will work together to create a single aerospace and aviation scheme of work, including lesson plans and printable and digital resources - all linked to the UK’s national curriculum for KS1 through KS4.
These teacher resource packs will be free to use and rolled out nationwide. They can be easily incorporated into teachers’ lesson plans or used by industry organisations when visiting schools or hosting school visits on site, ensuring a consistent, age-appropriate message is being delivered to young people across the country.
E-learning modules for students
Building on the lesson plans and resources, Skills Summit members will jointly create a series of interactive and engaging e-learning modules, which will be made available directly to students who are interested in learning more about the industry independently.