The STEM Partnership

John HolmanDirector, National Science Learning Centre

National STEM Director, DCSF/ DIUS

Questions for NAIGS

• What is the ‘STEM agenda’? What’s in it for schools and colleges?

• How much do schools and colleges need to know about the Action Programmes framework? How should it be communicated to them?

• What are the opportunities arising from the new Masters of Teaching and Learning?

STEM skills are valuable, but in short supply

• 59% of employers are having difficulty recruiting enough STEM-skilled individuals to meet their needs

• Larger firms are looking overseas for STEM skills, with 36% recruiting from India and 24% from China

• Employers are committed to encouraging more young people to study STEM

CBI education and skills survey 2008

STEM teaching has many supporters

STEM teaching in schools and colleges

Government Foundations Academia Industry

What do we agree on?

We need good attainment and good engagement:

- more young people doing well in STEM subjects and more wanting to continue studying them.

Students’ attitudes to science:800 Year 9 students aged 14• Two-thirds of students think science has a positive

influence on society.• 25% of students think that it would be good to have a

job as a scientist, but almost 33% indicate that they definitely do not want a job as a scientist.

• 85% of students believe it is important for the country to have well qualified scientists – though most do not want a job involving science themselves.

Judith Bennett, University of York for the National Science

Learning Centre. Surveys in 2006 and 2007

PISA 2006

Programme for International Student Assessment

30 countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

27 partner countries

2006 study, results published December 2007

PISA 2006

Science

o UK performance is significantly above the OECD average

o 7 countries (including Japan) performed significantly higher than England

o 13 countries (including Germany) are not significantly different from England

o 36 countries (including France and USA) performed significantly worse than England

PISA 2006

Science is valuable for mepercentage of students agreeing with positive statements about the personal value of science

OECD

average

UK USA Germany Japan

63 64 72 54 55

PISA 2006 I would like a career in sciencepercentage of students agreeing with statements about the value of a career in science

OECD

average

UK USA Germany Japan

29 25 36 26 21

Declining/static trend in A level entries for physics, chemistry and maths over the last 30 years

Entries shown as a proportion of the population aged 17 to take into account changes in the size of the cohort

A level entries

Integrating STEM

STEM

S T E M inside the classroom

STEM outside the classroom

Integrating STEM

1. Integrating the teaching of S, T, E and M within schools and colleges

2. Integrating STEM teaching in schools with the world outside

3. Integrating the efforts of partners

The concept: Where we are moving from

Government funded initiatives Non-Government funded initiatives

The Concept: 200 or so initiatives sorted into 11 Action Programmes

AP 1 AP 2 AP 3 AP 4 AP 5 AP 6 AP 7 AP 8 AP 9 AP 10 AP11

Priorities (1)

Get the curriculum right

Get the education infrastructure right

Priorities (2)

Get the right teachers

Provide excellent professional development for teachers

Enhance and enrich the STEM curriculum

Show what rich careers STEM qualifications can lead to

The benefits of partnership

How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top McKinsey, September 2007

Three things matter mosto Getting the right people to become

teacherso Developing them into effective

instructorso Ensuring the system is able to deliver

the best possible instruction for every child

How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top McKinsey, September 2007

‘Above all, the top performing systems demonstrate that the quality of an education system depends ultimately on the quality of its teachers’

Get the right teachers

• Action Programme 1 Improving the recruitment of teachers and lecturers in shortage subjects

Lead organisation: the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA)

Action Programme 1 Improving the recruitment of teachers and lecturers in shortage subjects

• Transition to Teaching:

• TDA-led programme to get industry people into teaching – especially STEM subjects

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Provide excellent professional development for teachers

• Action Programme 2 Improving teaching and learning through CPD for mathematics teachers Lead organisation: the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics

• Action Programme 3 Improving teaching and learning through CPD for science teachersLead organisation: the National Science Learning Centre

Action Programme 3 Improving teaching and learning through CPD for science teachers

• First meeting of National Science CPD committee 22 May 2008: objective to share intelligence and identify priorities

• Regional science CPD meetings taking place during July: objective to share regional intelligence and feed back to national committee

• Question for NAIGS: what are the opportunities arising from the new Masters of Teaching and Learning?

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Enhance and enrich the STEM curriculum • Action Programme 5 Enhancing and enriching

the science curriculum.Lead Organisation: SCORE (convened by The Royal Society)

• Action Programme 6 Enhancing and enriching the teaching of engineering and technology across the curriculumLead Organisation: Royal Academy of Engineering

• Action Programme 7 Enhancing and enriching the teaching of mathematics.Lead Organisation: Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education (ACME)

Action Programme 5 Enhancing and enriching the science curriculum.

• Directories of enhancement and enrichment opportunities being produced by BA/ RI

• SCORE is the strategic lead body for science

• Hard copy directories into schools in September. Web copies updated continuously

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Show what rich careers STEM qualifications can lead to

• Action Programme 8 Improving the quality of advice and guidance for students (and their teachers and parents) about STEM careers, to inform subject choice.Lead organisation: the National STEM Careers Co-ordinator at Sheffield Hallam University

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The benefits of partnership

• Working together towards common priorities

• Concentrating resources instead of dispersing them

• Widening expertise• Sharing information about what works• Being smarter about working with school

s and colleges

Being smarter about working with schools and colleges

• From September, Secondary National Strategy will be piloting a service for non-government partners to help them segment and target groups of schools which would benefit from support

Questions for NAIGS

• What is the ‘STEM agenda’? What’s in it for schools and colleges?

• How much do schools and colleges need to know about the Action Programmes framework? How should it be communicated to them?

• What are the opportunities arising from the new Masters of Teaching and Learning?

The Master of Teaching and Learning (MTL)

• MBA-style Masters qualification for all newly-starting teachers

• Modular, with credit accumulation

• To be acquired in first 5 years of teaching

• To be piloted in north-west from September 2009

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