Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: education and training strategy

10 Delivery Arrangements

We will establish an Implementation Group to oversee the delivery of the strategy. The Group will be chaired by the Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science. It will develop a delivery plan for the actions identified in this strategy and publish an annual report on progress. It will be supported by a broader external Advisory Group.

The Implementation Group will include membership from the following organisations and bodies with responsibility for delivery:

• Scottish Government – Chair
• Education Scotland and Scottish Qualifications Authority
• Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Funding Council and Enterprise Agencies
• COSLA/ ADES and CLD providers
• Science centres/festivals/public science engagement
• Industry, employer and workplace representation
• Third Sector partners including gender, equalities and equity experts

The Group’s annual report on progress will include a report on the data that we will collect to measure progress with the strategy. This is set out below. It will also describe what is being done to ensure that all the actions in this strategy promote equality of access, opportunities and outcomes in STEM through equality impact assessment of the strategy as it is delivered. The annual reports will also be provided to other boards and groups overseeing related programmes, including the new Scottish Education Council, the Developing the Young Workforce Programme Board and the new Strategic Skills Board. A key role of the Implementation Group will be to enable and strengthen collaboration, joint working and coherence of action across the different education and training sectors.

The group will also oversee a cross-sectoral project to collate and analyse data on the performance of the education and training system against the aims of the strategy and the development and monitoring of key performance indicators.

An External Advisory and Reference Group will be established to provide advice on implementation and to help provide coherence to the range of STEM activity underway across the education and training landscape. Both the Implementation Group and the External Reference Group will include equality experts, including gender experts, in their respective memberships. Both groups will also include employer representation and there will also be close liaison with the Industry Leadership Groups. The groups will seek to involve learners and practitioners in a meaningful way in their work.

Through its regular reporting and monitoring the Implementation Group will keep the actions set out within the strategy under review, considering where it should be revised or further developed in light of ongoing developments across the education and training sector.

Monitoring Progress

We will monitor progress in delivering this strategy by analysing and collating a range of data about the performance of the education and training system against the aims of the strategy, its outcomes and the changes that we expect to see within the lifetime of the strategy set out in Chapter 5. We will also develop a simple and coherent set of Key Performance Indicators to enable a more precise measurement of progress against the actions. These will be based on the six areas of change that we are working towards, as set out in Chapter 5.

Delivery Arrangements

We will work with partners to develop Key Performance Indicators to measure progress against the aims of the strategy. These will be based on the outcomes and the changes we expect to see and the data sources listed in this strategy. They will be finalised by the end of 2017.

In order to measure success against the strategy, we will collect the following data. We will keep this list under review as we develop and adapt this strategy. In particular, we will review it in light of the KPIs that are developed. Where possible we will present the results of our analysis broken down by gender and by other equalities characteristics.

Excellence

• Numbers and geographical distribution of STEM secondary school teachers published in the annual teacher and pupil census (broken down by STEM subject taught and gender).
• Entries and attainment in the STEM related national qualifications, awards and other pathways, including Foundation Apprenticeships.
• Enrolment, achievement and progression in FE and HE STEM subjects.
• Progress by Universities in meeting the targets for teacher training intakes in shortage STEM subjects.
• Engagement by practitioners in STEM professional learning activities.
• Levels of confidence for STEM amongst early learning and primary practitioners.
• Children and young people’s attainment and achievement in literacy, numeracy and health and well-being as assessed through the National Improvement Framework, analysed by deprivation and gender.
• PISA scores for mathematics and science.

Equity

• Entries, attainment and achievement in STEM related national qualifications, awards and other pathways, including Foundation Apprenticeships, broken down by region, gender, deprivation and other equalities characteristics that can be measured.
• Enrolment, achievement and progression in FE and HE STEM subjects – segmented by all the relevant protected characteristics and regionally, by individual college and university or across the sector. We will look at Scottish domiciled and non-domiciled students and report on them separately by enrolment, FTE, or success/completion rates.

Inspiration

• Audience participation, numbers and rates and learning outcomes achieved by public science engagement activities funded by the Scottish Government.
• Levels of engagement in STEM related work experience and work inspiration activities offered by employers.
• Levels of practitioner engagement with the Marketplace website to identify STEM activities.
• Attitudes of young people to STEM measured through the Young People in Scotland survey.

Connection

• Number of school-college and school-employer partnerships.
• Young people’s progression into positive destinations in STEM including work, training, further training or study.
• Volume of STEM Modern Apprenticeship/Foundation Apprenticeship/Graduate Level Apprenticeship starts and completions.
• STEM skills gaps and shortages in the labour market.
• Employer attitudes towards people leaving education and training and entering employment.