Articles
The UK is not redressing the widening skills gap that is reducing the country’s exporting competitiveness. Too many pupils, before they become 11-year-olds, decide that science and engineering are “not for them”. The UK cannot meet changing global demands unless the innate potential within all young learners, to experimentally explore the world of science and engineering, is nurtured.
Ways of nurturing this potential must be developed for wide use in primary schools. This will involve extra expenditure under challenging budgetary conditions. Such spending will boost pupils’ commitment to science and engineering. Consequently, more pupils will opt to study secondary-school science and engineering, because of their earlier joyful experience of “doing things” using the scientific method and working in an engineering way.
Nurturing pupils’ innate willingness to experiment, throughout their schooling, will equip them to be employed to co-operate with others to develop globally competitive workplace cultures and reduce the skills gap. Without skills shortages, UK businesses should become able to earn more by exporting, during the 2030s, than is spent on importing goods and services.
More outreaching to STEM practitioners is needed to help schoolteachers to appreciate the importance of science and engineering. This could be achieved by teachers of primary science working, via the internet, with others in different schools, together with practising engineers and scientists, to come up with practical science and engineering learning activities and develop pupils’ digital literacy.
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The proposed regular conference usage of the internet, in sessions of up to 30 minutes, will limit the disruption of class teaching and avoid the need to employ supply teachers during these conference calls.
A viable launch of this proposal, to foster the professional development of primary schoolteachers, will depend on several prerequisites including:
- Local education authority representatives and officers, together with leaders of educational trusts, undertaking to:
- select innovative teachers who wish to outreach to local engineers and scientists;
- give support for multi-school development and trial of learning activities to foster innovative thinking.
- Primary school head teachers undertaking to:
- nominate innovative teachers with a minimum of two years’ experience;
- provide agreed modest out-of-pocket expenses for selected colleagues;
- give adequate teaching remission to their colleagues involved in the outreaching.
- A selection of employers of engineers and scientists undertaking to:
- select innovative local engineers and scientists developing goods or services for export who are willing to collaborate with outreaching primary schoolteachers;
- allow paid work time to selected employees for outreaching activities.
Co-operation essential
Employers, STEM ambassadors and primary schoolteachers should co-operate more to address the skills gap and the decline of the UK’s exporting competitiveness by:
- showing all pupils that engineering and science can be fun as well as offering practical solutions to improve the environment, quality of life and restore the UK’s global competitiveness;
- providing more opportunities to enable primary pupils to develop their digital literacy.
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