Inspiring young people with professional registration
We’re celebrating Chartered Week this week! The week recognises the importance of chartership for working engineers and STEM professionals. To mark the week, we’ve published a new report which looks at young people’s views on professional registration.
At The Big Bang Fair 2025, we surveyed young people to find out what they know about professional registration. And whether professional registration changed how they think about future career in engineering. Results show that awareness of professional registration among students aged 10 to 13 is very low. 72% reported they had not heard of it, 18% were unsure and only 10% of respondents had heard of professional registration before The Fair.
However, when professional registration was explained in an age-appropriate way, 62% of young people said it made them more interested in engineering. This was due to themes of trust, respect, career opportunity, and personal confidence that professional registration offers.
However, 32% of students said learning about professional registration hadn’t made them more interested in engineering. This tended to be because they were either uncertain about their future or less interested in engineering in general. For these students, knowing about professional registration alone was not motivating and was described as feeling a bit complicated or abstract.
Amanda Aldercotte, our Head of Evaluation and Impact, explains:
“We need more young people from all backgrounds to be interested in engineering and technology careers. These findings suggest that when presented in the right way, professional registration can help young people understand that engineering careers are built on trust, respect, and real opportunities for progression. By connecting professional registration to broader stories of creativity, real-world impact and role models, we can make it feel relevant and inspiring for young people.”
The report includes several recommendations to ensure that professional registration improves interest and confidence for young people, without feeling distant or intimidating.
Report recommendations:
- Inspire first, explain later - lead with what makes engineering exciting, creative, and impactful before introducing professional registration
- Make professional registration relatable - use stories of diverse engineers, real projects, and tangible examples to help students connect with the concept
- Focus on benefits, not formalities - emphasise trust, recognition, and career pathways rather than formal processes or requirements for becoming chartered
By connecting professional registration to broader stories of creativity, real-world impact and role models, we can make it feel relevant and inspiring for young people
— Amanda Aldercotte, Head of Evaluation and Impact, EngineeringUK
