STEM strategy for education and training: third annual report

Introduction

The Strategy identifies four key challenges for STEM education and training in Scotland:

• We need to ensure children, young people and adults are encouraged to develop an interest in, and enthusiasm for, STEM that is reinforced throughout their lives.

• We need to ensure our education system has the right number of practitioners, including teachers with the appropriate STEM capability, delivering excellent learning and teaching.

• We need to ensure that our education and training system is equipping people with the skills that employers need and that it has the flexibility to respond to the changes in labour market demand and the globalised economic context.

• We need to tackle the gender imbalances and other inequities that exist across STEM education and training including in relation to race, disability, deprivation and geography. These are unfair and undermine our ability to deliver inclusive economic growth in Scotland.

We have made no change to the four key aims of the Strategy that were set out four years ago. These are:

• to build the capacity of the education and training system to deliver excellent STEM learning so that employers have access to the workforce they need;

• to inspire children, young people and adults to study STEM and to continue their studies to obtain more specialist skills; and

• to close equity gaps in participation and attainment in STEM so that everyone has the opportunity to fulfil their potential and contribute to Scotland's economic prosperity;

• to connect the STEM education and training offer with labour market need – both now and in the future – to support improved productivity and inclusive economic growth.

This report is divided into actions reflecting each of those themes alongside some of the opportunities that exist for enhancing actions in the years to come. We intend, subject to lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, to produce a short analysis report in the Autumn that will comment specifically on progress in respect of the Key Performance Indicators that are, and will remain, a key feature of our strategic approach to STEM education and training in Scotland.