Science, technology, engineering and maths. These are the disciplines covered within 'STEM' and in the UK we need more people skilled at them and employed within them. At the recent cross-party CaSE debate at the Royal Society, UK politicians gave a not too cheery outlook for the near future.
All agreed that to fill the gap it is imperative that effort is put into schools in order to equip teachers with the knowledge and resources to make science fun! Textbooks are not the answer here. Informal teaching is needed via school trips to museums and events and practical class exercises must be pushed for. It is still famously either space or dinosaurs that hook children into science, so these need to be pushed even further as the entry point into science for youngsters.
Moving on to secondary school, particularly GCSE age, and the careers service is in dire need of improvement. Many people do not feel helped by their careers service and are unaware of the options in STEM disciplines available to them. By pushing these courses at universities we will have more degrees held within STEM and hopefully retain many of these people in the sector for work and research.
However, our skills gap is current and the above plan will take over a decade to trickle through. Despite Government efforts to get the working ages into STEM via part time Masters courses the number of people enrolling on them has dropped. This is troublesome seeing as Career Development Loans are fairly readily available.
So must we look further afield to fill the STEM skills gap? Giving overseas researchers and workers an incentive to come to the UK may be a wise move. We have many of the world's most brilliant universities yet immigration laws and a general perception of immigration being a negative thing is hindering the process.
So for the moment the gap looks set to stay….
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