Structural Barriers to STEM Engagement Report is now available on Education Scotland’s National Improvement Hub.

This evaluation was conducted by Ekosgen on behalf of Education Scotland and the Scottish Government and is the third in a series of reports supporting the implementation of Scotland’s STEM Education and Training Strategy.

The report provides a valuable insight into perceptions of STEM and factors that would encourage a greater number of learners to continue on their STEM pathways. The data was drawn from 78 interviews with teachers, school leaders, local authority staff and college staff and over 1300 responses from learners and 500 from parents.

The report also contains high-level recommendations to inform the next phase of implementation of the STEM Strategy.

Findings include:

• Learners want their learning experience rooted in the real world with a strong focus on jobs and work experience.
• 59% of parents want more opportunity for their children to work with businesses through their learning.
• Most learners want to or are thinking about taking or continuing STEM subjects (75%). This attitude is most pronounced at S4-S6 (70%), and amongst males (76% vs 74% female). However, those in S1-S3 are least likely to want to take or continue with STEM subjects.
• More than half of respondents want to continue with STEM subjects because they like a specific subject or topic (52%), whilst many recognise STEM subjects as important for future study (46%) or work (42%).
• A better range of subjects offered at all levels was identified by most pupils as a means to help encourage more pupils to engage with STEM (45%; 54% of parents).
• Some 30% of learners said that they wanted to drop STEM subjects as they were not good at them – 66% of respondents that stated this were female.
• Female learners are more likely to report that Learning for Sustainability, climate education and outdoor learning would encourage them to take STEM subjects.

Education Scotland would like to thank all who took part in the interviews, completed the surveys and supported the evaluation activity. The fourth phase of the evaluation is now underway and will focus on effective practice to encourage strong uptake in STEM. If you have interesting practice to share we’d love to hear from you – email us at stem@educationscotland.gov.scot

To see previous evaluation reports and our full range of national STEM data then visit our National Improvement Hub STEM summary page.