According to the National Assembly’s Enterprise and Learning Committee, STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) skills amongst young people are is simply not up to scratch, highlighting a lack of high-quality specialist teachers, poor student performances and negative perceptions of the subjects.
Their report showed that the proportion of students in Wales taking sciences and maths at A-level is significantly below the rest of the UK, and the teaching of combined science as opposed to separate biology, chemistry and physics at GCSE was proving ineffective.
The Committee recommends that WAG works to recruit and retain teachers with specialist expertise, and says government and industry need to address gender stereotypes in the subjects, which were seen as “male” domains. It also calls for more partnerships between schools and employers to allow pupils to get work experience.
Interesting to note that whilst the WAG spokesperson noted that “The minister has made a clear commitment to raising standards across the board in Wales", I believe that there has been no major announcement, in the year since his appointment, on STEM subjects.
Perhaps he should take a leaf out of the book of Mike Moritz, Wales' most successful businessesman.
During my visit to his headquarters in Silicon Valley earlier this year, the man who invested in Google, Yahoo and Youtube was unequivocal that
"nurturing, developing and attracting the best talent is the key economic strategy that Wales should focus on...providing the resources necessary at the primary and secondary school level to nurture the home grown scientists, engineers and technologists of the future. For example, by stimulating and supporting science within Welsh schools, Mike Moritz believed that you could develop a whole new generation of idea-driven young people that could help develop the industries of the future".
As I wrote at the time, it is a simple message but again one that has been largely ignored by policymakers and politicians in Wales.
Given the concerns raised by the Committee, surely it is time that WAG took this seriously, not only for the sake of the economy but. more importantly, for the future of our young people.
In fact, some would argue that there is little point of WAG giving public money towards a £400 million university project in Swansea if we are simply not producing the quality and quantity of Welsh students from our schools in STEM subjects.
In fact, some would argue that there is little point of WAG giving public money towards a £400 million university project in Swansea if we are simply not producing the quality and quantity of Welsh students from our schools in STEM subjects.
6 comments:
Dylan Just 34.5% of students in Merthyr passed GCSE in Maths and English at grade C and above.The other 65.5% of the year cohort are already effectively heading for a life either in low paid employment or benefits. Although we don't have figures for the performance of children on free school meals in Wales we already know that in England just 4% obtained a pass in either Chemistry or Physics at GCSE. I doubt if the figures for Wales are any better. In the 1960s apprentices for the former Steel Company of Wales needed 4 O levels including Maths and a Science such as Physics or Chemmistry.In 2012, UCL will require all future students to have at least one foreign language at GCSE grade C or above. Probably all the Russell Group universities will eventually require a foreign language. It will interesting to see what effect this will have on the potential unversity choice of students from working class backgrounds in Wales. Politicians are great at producing reports on issues particularly when they are not directly responsible for delivery. Money isn't everything but the fact that children in the First Minister's own local authority have £961 less spent on their education than their counterparts in England should worry everyone concerned about the future prosperity of Wales. Who is going to invest in a part of the UK where 40% of students at 11 have failed to reach the expected standards in the basic subjects? I read the Economist every week . It is a magazine read by business throughout the world as its extensive coverage of world events illustrates. When the PISA results were published the Economist carried an article which included the comment that the decline in the UK's performance was due to the poor performance of Wales. What chance has anyone got if that is the image that the world sees. Rather than making exaggerated claims about how full lawmaking powers can somehow release the 'hidden potential' of Wales perhaps we need to concentrate a bit more on improving delivery in key areas such as education.
Jeff - your point about education is well made.
To me, the biggest tragedy is that we have had over a billion pounds of ESF money since 2000 and yet because of some obscure European regulations that WAG seems to delight in enforcing to the letter, we cannot or have not used any of this to boost STEM teaching within our poorest communities.
Imagine what that money could have done in terms of delivering new laboratories and infrastructure across Wales.
What is needed is a root and branch reform of how we do policy in wales which is obsessed less with process and more with outcomes.
In England the overall gap between the performance of pupils on Free School Meals and the performance of those not on FSMs has been closed by targeted measures. Looking at attainment of the CSI (expected standard at KS4 including English/Welsh (first Language), maths and science in Wales the gap in 2004 was 35%. In subsequent years it went; 34,34,34,35,39,37% in 2010.
In other words, its got worse. As for Modern Foreign Languages, an area where we are supposed to excel because we are a naturally bi-lingual country teaching two languages from age four to 15, we have the lowest take up of the subject at GCSE of any of the UK countries and a lower pass rate.
The lowest take up according to an Estyn report was in Welsh medium schools.
So what is the main consistent target of the WAG funded disproportionately and backed by a plethora of initiatives?
The expansion of welsh Medium schools.
If you look at the statistics you can see that WM secondaries have the cream of the student crop.
The level of pupils on FSMs is 11% and 85.3% of GCSE pupils in 2010, who took exams from WM schools, were in schools with less than 15% on FSMs.
On the other hand only 43.5% of GCSE pupils in EM schools took exams from schools with less than 15% FSMs. Overall EM schools had 20% of pupils on FSMs.
You may think that this doesn't matter, that it merely reflects the acknowledged fact that Welsh speakers in Wales are more likely to be employed and earn 8% to 10% more than Non Welsh speakers on average.
In fact there is good cause for concern at the economic stratification of schools outside Welsh speaking areas.
In The south and SE you see a massive divide opening up between the economic status of children in WM schools in comparison with EM schools. The divide is there again when you look at ethnic minorities in WM and EM schools. Across Wales there are three times the number of ethnic minority students in EM schools than there are in WM schools. Again the difference is most stark in places like Cardiff where the gulf is huge.
So what happens? inevitably WM schools have good education outcomes and middle class parents take their children out of EM schools with a lot of children on FSMs and put them into WM schools. The end result is that the EM schools slide down the attainment ladder and become stigmatised and neglected.
Overall Education always suffers from this kind of stratification. If every school in Wales had exactly the same level of children on FSMs then attainment levels overall would be massively higher.
And where are the extra funds going? Into WM schools.
Average size of WM secondary schools? 743.
EM secondary schools 974.
Pupil to teacher ratio?
WM secondaries 15.06 to1
EM secondaries 16.69 to1
SEN pupils?
WM Secondaries 19.6%
EM.............21.5%
It would be clear to anyone that Wales has to address a failure to focus on the genuine problems that it has with deprivation and the attainment of deprived children.
So what are the papers and Assembly press releases full of? Another measure or other to aid the middle class flight to Welsh Medium education!
Dylan My local rag has yet another announcement of more EU money for Maesteg. £2.2 million will be spent on returning the market to basically what it was in 1914 and refurbishment of the bus station. This is despite the fact that a great deal of public money was spent to refurbish the whole area less than 20 years ago. The bus station is in better condition than the main bus station in Prague. Millions of pounds of EU money has been spent in the valleys on basically new street furniture. It doesn't add one penny to the GVA of an area. Whilst our economic rivals in Eastern Europe use EU money for infrastructure projects which aid economic growth and add value to the economy, we throw it away on tidying up the street scene. Within a few years because of a lack of quality control and cheap materials the finished product often looks worse than the original street scene. Two million pounds to recreate an open space when the local comprehensive is looking at a real cut again in its budget. Two million for a bus station when the former Revlon site which used to emply over 2000 has been completely demolished and looks like a bomb site. You really couldn't make any of this up. In years to come when the European auditors start to look at outcomes it will be interesting to see what conclusions they come to with regard to the use of EU money in many areas of Wales.
Its not just about obsession with process, but an insular obsession with Welshness (in a very narrow form) and a perverse nation-building agenda.
You would wonder with the current state of education and the economy in California I would like to know what Moritz thinks of that?
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