From fi nishing school, it took building
engineer Ian Batkin 31 years of
evenings and weekends to achieve
CEng, which he gained in 2017. His
story reminds us that, with vision and
determination, even a worker with
limited qualifi cations can reach the
highest levels of engineering
The tortoise
and the hare
There comes a point in most
students’ education when they
feel overwhelmed by a seeminglynever
ending course of studies:
“Will it ever end?” they moan. These people
might keep in mind the dif culties borne
by those brave and determined people
forced by circumstance to relegate study
into evenings and weekends, to t around
earning a wage during the day. Stretched
to their furthest extent, such courses
are sometimes measured not in years
but decades. Such was the case of one
extraordinary Staffordshire engineer.
Born in the brewing town of Burton Upon
Trent in 1970, Ian Batkin did not want to
follow his father into the breweries, driving a
forklift and delivering beer. He recalls: “The
only thing ever available to the likes of me
was using your hands and not necessarily
using your brain. Mum and dad weren’t
from the part of society that would have
been able to afford me going to university.
In the 1980s, you went if you had money.
Now there are student loans; that wasn’t
a choice for me at that time. My options
were: engineering, or working on the tools.”
The latter was a pretty frightful prospect,
as common industrial jobs took place in
smoke- and fume- lled factories without
much regard for health and safety.
Fortunately, when he was 14 (pictured,
p29, right), Ian’s school brought in a new
City & Guilds introductory engineering
programme at school. One morning a week,
it took students to Burton Technical College
(now Burton and South Derbyshire College)
to sample mechanical, electrical and
fabrication courses.
He recalls: “I could have been a plumber
or an electrician. I chose fabrication.” Two
years later, he’d won his rst certi cate, in
Industrial Studies, an old CSE, equivalent to
a GCSE today, and left school to enroll on a
YTS, youth training scheme (another City &
Guilds course) for welding and fabrication.
This not only introduced the subject, it also
paid a wage. Its purpose was to prepare
young people for apprenticeships.
And it worked; Ian found himself at
Robert Morton DG (now Briggs of Burton),
a manufacturer of tanks and hoppers
for breweries. But after little more
than a month, it became clear that the
company couldn’t afford to keep all of the
apprentices it had taken on, so Ian was
apprenticed instead to FJ Duckworths, a
fabricator of portal frames and steelwork for
buildings.
LIFE OF AN APPRENTICE
Most of the week, he worked as a plater,
cutting plates to drawings, tack-welding the
pieces together, and then passing them
over to his partner, who performed the nal
welds before the assembly was sent on to
the paint shop. One day a week, he went
back to Burton Technical College.
Ian remembers: “It was very good. The
only down side was, working in a heavy
factory, you tended to slash your ngers,
and had to be aware that you would lose
limbs if you didn’t take care. But at 18, I
was getting not a bad wage, so that was
the way forward.”
28 www.ied.org.uk
/www.ied.org.uk