5 MAY 2015

What You Need To Know About STEM in FE - The Background

Hello and welcome to the first of our 'STEM in FE' blog series - it's lovely to have you here and we hope you enjoy the posts!

Hello and welcome to the first of our 'STEM in FE' blog series - it's lovely to have you here and we hope you enjoy the posts!

Over the course of the series we will look at the UK's current situation with STEM, the proposed solutions and the issues we face along the way to strengthening STEM sufficiently. Do sign up for our 'Best of the blog' monthly email at the bottom of the page to make sure you don't miss out on any of the series.

Righto - let's get to it...

The situation

Over the last few years there has been a great deal of reporting about the UK’s need to strengthen our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) skilled workforce, with the annual shortfall of STEM skilled workers currently standing at a whopping 40,000. 82,000 engineers and technicians are needed just to deal with retirements up to 2016.

STEM industries contribute a huge amount to the UK economy, and recent figures demonstrate there is the potential for this contribution to be much higher in the future, (especially with ambitious plans like the High Speed 2 rail network in the pipeline) so the skills shortages in STEM sectors are a real threat to the UK’s capacity for growth. The skills shortage is partly due to the speed the World is developing at, with new technical innovations springing up every day, presenting a whole host of new industries and career opportunities for suitably qualified candidates. In addition to this, our education system is not managing to conjure up this qualified workforce, having not cultivated these candidates effectively for a number of years.830,000 graduate-level science, engineering and technology professionals will be required by 2020.

Public perception

A key issue (that also came up in ‘Party Pledges and FE – What We Know So Far’) is the public and pupils’ perception of the courses. They are often seen as highly academic, and in the eyes of most school children, dreadfully dull. This has lead to poor uptake of STEM courses, making them even less financially viable to run. In truth the jobs requiring STEM skills are hugely diverse and wide ranging, many of them offering amazing careers and a very healthy pay packet, but at the moment this key information isn’t getting through to pupils. Opportunities now include hugely exciting things like 3D printing, robotics, nanotechnology, cloud computing, mobile technology and app development.

Difficulty in Delivery

The other complication is the difficulty in Colleges delivering STEM courses. According to an NFER report, funding cuts and the associated reduction in staff time mean teachers are not able to undertake the necessary Continued Professional Development (CPD) to develop their skills and knowledge in line with the pace of change in their subject areas. In addition to this, they face difficulties recruiting and retaining adequately trained staff and lack the time to engage with local employers in order to improve the suitability of the courses.

Blame game

Further Education Colleges have faced criticism for not aligning their courses with the needs of industry, focussing solely on local business needs and short-term priorities. However, since there is no coherent vision or coordinated national skills strategy in place, we hardly think they can be lampooned for focussing on courses of more interest to their pupils.

Overall...

The situation with STEM in the UK is poor, but there are solutions being heavily promoted and supported, so tune in for the next post where we look at what activities, programmes and reforms have been initiated to further the case of STEM, and give our two cents on them.