ETAG’s female only open day is a great success
24 Apr 2025
Our Business Development Manager, Reuben Davison, recently visited Energy Technical Academy (ETAG), in Kirkintilloch, north-east of Glasgow, and was told about their up-coming community initiative - an all-female open day at the centre. The company does a lot to engage with its local community and set up the open day to promote careers in building services to young women and girls.
This week, Reuben spoke with Jaqui Wilkie, technical engineer at ETAG, who also works on business development. He was keen to find out more about the event:
RD: How did your open day go on Saturday?
JW: It was a great success! We decided to make it an all-girl event, inviting pupils from local schools and we had a great turn-out.
We’d publicised the open day widely through word of mouth and social media. My daughter and niece spread the word at their respective schools, and we reached out to a couple more schools close-by. We also posted the event on Facebook and other local forums.
Most of the girls came with their parents, so we were able to present our courses to them as well, which we found particularly useful. Most attendees were at the point in their school careers where they’re choosing their N5s or thinking about what they’re going to do when they leave school. It was good for their parents to see the options available and the routes their daughters could take to start careers in building services from the age of 16. If people aren’t able to get onto an apprenticeship, private training providers such as ours can help them achieve the qualifications they need to move forward.
RD: What was it that prompted you to set this open day up in the first place?
JW: Well, it was the experience of my own daughter, who’d come back from a careers day at school and been offered – as I had been twenty years before – a very limited scope for a career; basically hairdressing, beauty, or hospitality.
It was depressing to see that things haven’t changed and that the old stereotypes are still in place. These young girls aren’t being offered anything in engineering, it’s still seen as a career for the boys and that’s got to change.
I started out as a hairdresser but eventually found my way. I trained as a gas engineer later in life, before taking on my current role as a trainer. I was lucky that ETAG took me on as an older apprentice, but we need young women to come into the engineering profession at an earlier age. There shouldn’t be blocks to their dreams and we’re wasting the chance to find and train good engineers to help fill the skills gap that everyone keeps talking about.
After the conversation with my daughter, Tommy, (Director of ETAG) and I put our heads together and organised the open day, to let young women see there’s more to life than a career in beauty! We were supported by Octopus Energy, who sent a member of their team to the event, and we invited our local MP, Susan Murray, who is a great advocate for renewable energy.
The open day gave us the opportunity to talk to Susan about funding. The Scottish Government doesn’t incentivise mid-life training; there’s no grant to help people re-train, and she left our event determined to push this agenda forward. It’s all very well for big companies to promote careers in engineering to people in their thirties and forties, but if there’s no money to support them in making a change, most simply can’t afford to retrain. It’s too late.
In the meantime, Tommy and I feel that in sowing the seeds early, we’ll be able to promote training and careers in our sector to school-age candidates – to offer girls and women a broader scope and more exciting career options for the future.
RD: That’s interesting, I can see you feel very passionately about this. What did you offer the girls who came to the open day?
JW: We ran drop-in sessions that people could attend in electrics, gas, and renewables. Simple workshops to familiarise girls with the tools and language around the tasks at hand. People have become increasingly divorced from many of the skills that homeowners used to have; re-wiring a plug for example, which I remember learning at school, seems to have slipped from the current curriculum.
You could see how much the girls enjoyed the sessions and how their confidence grew - in a very short space of time. We had a smart meter installer, who like the rest of the technical experts volunteered to help for the day, and he showed them how to install a smart meter. We had a gas engineer who let them practice pipe tightening and an electrician who tackled re-wiring the plugs! It was all very positive.
RD: It sounds it! Will you do another one?
JW: I think we will. A couple of women in their early twenties came on Saturday and got a lot out of it, so we’re likely to run another event aimed at adult women wanting to change career. That’s more likely to lead to some direct course bookings, which would be great for us.
We may also look at taking our training workshops into schools as we’ve done in the past, but really, we’ve found they work better on site here as we’ve got the facilities set up and it’s safer to work in our training bays. Plus, being in our centre gives potential learners a better sense of what it’s like to train with us. We’re a family-based business and teach people in small friendly groups, it’s not like school and we’re keen to show it off!
RD: Finally, what more do you think you can do to encourage women into our sector?
JW: Tommy’s been thinking about running a female only class. That’s an interesting one. I trained with Tommy, he was a fantastic mentor and to a certain extent, I think it’s good to learn alongside men. That way the stereotypes can be challenged a bit.
There were no concessions made to the fact that I was a woman and so that made the transition I made into work an easier one. I’ve always been on a level footing with the guys I trained with and as such, taken as seriously. I can see that offering all-female training could encourage more women, but perhaps it's a bit artificial?
Bringing more women into the trades is important and I’m pleased that we’re able to offer girls and women opportunities that I couldn’t access as a youngster. Targeting girls at school seems a good way to get the shift we’re looking for in building an engineering workforce for the future.
Pupils from local schools attending the all-female open day at ETAG
Our Business Development Manager, Reuben Davison, recently visited Energy Technical Academy (ETAG), in Kirkintilloch, north-east of Glasgow, and was told about their up-coming community initiative - an all-female open day at the centre. The company does a lot to engage with its local community and set up the open day to promote careers in building services to young women and girls.
This week, Reuben spoke with Jaqui Wilkie, technical engineer at ETAG, who also works on business development. He was keen to find out more about the event:
RD: How did your open day go on Saturday?
JW: It was a great success! We decided to make it an all-girl event, inviting pupils from local schools and we had a great turn-out.
We’d publicised the open day widely through word of mouth and social media. My daughter and niece spread the word at their respective schools, and we reached out to a couple more schools close-by. We also posted the event on Facebook and other local forums.
Most of the girls came with their parents, so we were able to present our courses to them as well, which we found particularly useful. Most attendees were at the point in their school careers where they’re choosing their N5s or thinking about what they’re going to do when they leave school. It was good for their parents to see the options available and the routes their daughters could take to start careers in building services from the age of 16. If people aren’t able to get onto an apprenticeship, private training providers such as ours can help them achieve the qualifications they need to move forward.
RD: What was it that prompted you to set this open day up in the first place?
JW: Well, it was the experience of my own daughter, who’d come back from a careers day at school and been offered – as I had been twenty years before – a very limited scope for a career; basically hairdressing, beauty, or hospitality.
It was depressing to see that things haven’t changed and that the old stereotypes are still in place. These young girls aren’t being offered anything in engineering, it’s still seen as a career for the boys and that’s got to change.
I started out as a hairdresser but eventually found my way. I trained as a gas engineer later in life, before taking on my current role as a trainer. I was lucky that ETAG took me on as an older apprentice, but we need young women to come into the engineering profession at an earlier age. There shouldn’t be blocks to their dreams and we’re wasting the chance to find and train good engineers to help fill the skills gap that everyone keeps talking about.
After the conversation with my daughter, Tommy, (Director of ETAG) and I put our heads together and organised the open day, to let young women see there’s more to life than a career in beauty! We were supported by Octopus Energy, who sent a member of their team to the event, and we invited our local MP, Susan Murray, who is a great advocate for renewable energy.
The open day gave us the opportunity to talk to Susan about funding. The Scottish Government doesn’t incentivise mid-life training; there’s no grant to help people re-train, and she left our event determined to push this agenda forward. It’s all very well for big companies to promote careers in engineering to people in their thirties and forties, but if there’s no money to support them in making a change, most simply can’t afford to retrain. It’s too late.
In the meantime, Tommy and I feel that in sowing the seeds early, we’ll be able to promote training and careers in our sector to school-age candidates – to offer girls and women a broader scope and more exciting career options for the future.
RD: That’s interesting, I can see you feel very passionately about this. What did you offer the girls who came to the open day?
JW: We ran drop-in sessions that people could attend in electrics, gas, and renewables. Simple workshops to familiarise girls with the tools and language around the tasks at hand. People have become increasingly divorced from many of the skills that homeowners used to have; re-wiring a plug for example, which I remember learning at school, seems to have slipped from the current curriculum.
You could see how much the girls enjoyed the sessions and how their confidence grew - in a very short space of time. We had a smart meter installer, who like the rest of the technical experts volunteered to help for the day, and he showed them how to install a smart meter. We had a gas engineer who let them practice pipe tightening and an electrician who tackled re-wiring the plugs! It was all very positive.
RD: It sounds it! Will you do another one?
JW: I think we will. A couple of women in their early twenties came on Saturday and got a lot out of it, so we’re likely to run another event aimed at adult women wanting to change career. That’s more likely to lead to some direct course bookings, which would be great for us.
We may also look at taking our training workshops into schools as we’ve done in the past, but really, we’ve found they work better on site here as we’ve got the facilities set up and it’s safer to work in our training bays. Plus, being in our centre gives potential learners a better sense of what it’s like to train with us. We’re a family-based business and teach people in small friendly groups, it’s not like school and we’re keen to show it off!
RD: Finally, what more do you think you can do to encourage women into our sector?
JW: Tommy’s been thinking about running a female only class. That’s an interesting one. I trained with Tommy, he was a fantastic mentor and to a certain extent, I think it’s good to learn alongside men. That way the stereotypes can be challenged a bit.
There were no concessions made to the fact that I was a woman and so that made the transition I made into work an easier one. I’ve always been on a level footing with the guys I trained with and as such, taken as seriously. I can see that offering all-female training could encourage more women, but perhaps it's a bit artificial?
Bringing more women into the trades is important and I’m pleased that we’re able to offer girls and women opportunities that I couldn’t access as a youngster. Targeting girls at school seems a good way to get the shift we’re looking for in building an engineering workforce for the future.
Pupils from local schools attending the all-female open day at ETAG