Are we serious about STEM?

I’ve been privileged enough to be attending some of the local Young Enterprise events and during a break today the topic of STEM came up. I’m keen on pushing STEM in YE, and I’ve also signed up with Bring IT On (by default due to my employer) and StemNET (which is hosted by W5 at the Odyssey) in order to try and promote STEM subjects in local education.

We know that software and media is going to be a growth area. There are strategies being published daily by countries all around the globe (though why Northern Ireland needs its own special strategy is frankly beyond me) which explain why and how “digital” is the future growth area for our western economies. The UK has a whole rat of strategy documents written by StartupBritain, NESTA, DEMOS, TSB, BIS and others. The ROI recently published a report by Forfas on the games industry.

But I don’t think we’re serious about STEM.

My grammar school too STEM quite seriously. The compulsory subjects for GCSE were English Language, English Literature, Mathematics, Religious Education and French. (We campaigned during my Fourth year to have the option to switch a language – not abandon a second language – but to choose a different one. We were denied. ) As my elective subjects I took Biology, Chemistry, German and Home Economics*. I later added Physics and Additional Mathematics during my Lower VI year. So while my school may not have taken STEM too seriously, I certainly did.

But I don’t think that the Department of Education has ever taken it seriously. They have the ability to dictate that Science and Computer Science (as opposed to ICT) become compulsory subjects to GCSE level. And if they’re not doing that then it represents a serious disconnect from where we want our economy to go and where we make policy in order to get it there. The Northern Ireland Science Park published a report earlier this month highlighting the opportunity if we seize the knowledge economy at all levels. The headline is “50,000 extra jobs“.

We are inundated with workshops, inputs, seminars, plans, policies, frameworks and strategies on the why and where. What we really need is a bit more focus on the how and the now.

The bottom line is that the results we achieve will be the results we aim for. We can talk about policy all day but if there isn’t a concrete implementation embedding STEM into the curriculum then the policy is wasted. You want to make Northern Ireland a knowledge economy? Start now by incentivising STEM in post-primary. And make computer science one of those subjects which can be taught.

We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people.

*Home Economics was also called Domestic Science. Which was a bit of a lame duck as it consisted really of cooking and sewing. But it also had a female:male ratio of 15:1.