Letters: December 2023

School technicians overlooked

Once again, school technicians are being left behind, ignored, forgotten and left for dead. The whole impetus is solely focused on higher education and industry technicians as demonstrated by projects such as UK Research and Innovation’s Technician Commitment or the Science Museum’s Technicians exhibition,  where not a single school technician was represented in the interactive gallery so children who have never seen those kinds of techs could relate to any of them.

Not surprisingly, school technicians are leaving the profession, especially experienced and skilled techs who have given much more than their job descriptions over years to improve the education of science and design and technology. Although rewarding, reasons given for leaving such as lack of recognition, adequate pay and managers or administrators not understanding what the job entails are not uncommon.

To make matters worse, there are no incentives to attract new candidates. Application numbers have dropped dramatically over the last few years to the point almost of schools considering not having a school technician at all.