Principally authored by the Chief Scientific Adviser to the BIS (Professor John Perkins), it made key recommendations for improving the training of British engineers and encouraging more entrants into the profession.
Key aspects it highlighted included the gender gap, with ten times more men employed in the profession than women, and the current reliance on foreign engineers.
The report was commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) under the Cameron–Clegg coalition government and took two years to prepare.
[1]: 1 The principal author of the report was Professor John Perkins, the chief scientific adviser to BIS, and it was published in November 2013.
[3] As part of the response to the Perkins Review business secretary Vince Cable announced £49 million of funding for improvements to engineering education.
[8] A further £2.8 million of funding, as part of the Improving Engineering Careers scheme, was announced in March 2015 to help six companies implement the objectives of the Perkins Review.
The companies, which included the Nissan plant in Sunderland, would match the government funding and implement schemes to train more British engineers and offer more job positions.
Conservative MP Peter Luff advocated targeting campaigns at age groups even younger than the 11-year-olds proposed in Perkins' report, citing research from the National Foundation for Educational Research that intervention at primary school age was most effective – an opinion echoed by Meg Munn.