How well are you supporting excellence in STEM at your school or trust?

4 December 2024 | 5 minute read

We need to prepare young people to enter the workforce of the future where they’ll be facing challenges and requiring skills that we don’t even know about yet - particularly in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Diversity within STEM is also a problem - many pupils don’t consider it as an option, or they feel like it’s simply not for them. This is especially the case if it’s underrepresented in their schools.

GovernorHub Knowledge has co-produced a STEM governance toolkit alongside leading industry experts which aims to provide school and trust volunteers with everything they need to make STEM a priority.

We caught up with Danielle Broughton, content editor at GovernorHub Knowledge, to find out more.

Danielle, firstly can you tell me a little bit about the GovernorHub Knowledge STEM toolkit? How did it come about?

Well, we were initially approached by the engineering firm Atkins Realis, which has been working closely with Governors for Schools on a project to better support and develop the role of the STEM governor or trustee. Usually, a STEM governor or trustee is someone who comes from industry and brings their real-world expertise to support schools with their STEM activities and focus.

Atkins Realis works with a lot of different organisations so we ended up forming a taskforce for this project.

We had representatives from the Association for Science Education, BCS - the Chartered Institute for IT, the Design and Technology Association, the National Centre for Computing Education, and NCETM which is the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics. We also had the Careers Enterprise Company which came in at the end to oversee the careers element of the toolkit.

The team then looked at:

the key challenges schools face when thinking about STEM
issues that STEM governors can face on their boards
the link between STEM and careers work in schools

We’ve produced three guides which cover everything you’d need to know or do in order to make STEM a priority in your school or trust.

What's covered in each of the guides?

Our first article looks at how to make STEM a strategic priority in your school or trust so we focus on what STEM is, why it matters and how to start the conversation when, as we know, there are so many competing priorities in schools. That’s our starting point.

Then, we have an article specifically for the role of the link governor. This is the logical next step if your school or trust has identified that you’d like to focus on STEM. So whether you do that by putting it into the vision and values or within a school or trust improvement plan - you always have someone on the board who will be looking at things through this lens.

This article includes a planner, something relatively new for us which combines a checklist, with questions to ask and some planning around your first year as a STEM governor. We’ll support you to learn who’s in charge of STEM in each part of the school or trust, who you need to speak to - all the way through to reviewing what you've done for the year and looking at priorities for next year. It’s very comprehensive.

Our final article focuses on questions to ask about STEM. This is where we’ve had great input from our industry partners. These are subject specific, and split by phase - so primary and secondary. Even if you don’t have a STEM link governor on your board, there’s something for everyone - and enough so that you can go into detail with STEM subject leaders or department heads. Or you might simply just be able to pick out a few relevant questions if you’ve got, for example, a science lead, coming to present to the board.

Were any of the industry experts you worked with governors or trustees? If so, did they have a track record of making STEM a priority on their boards?

Most of them actually came to be governors because their school or trust already had STEM as a strategic priority. So it wasn't necessarily that they'd come in and persuade the school or trust to take STEM more seriously, rather they’d been appointed because of their experience and the school was leading the way.

It’s easy to think of STEM as about engineering, but perhaps you can remind us about the breadth of STEM in a school or trust curriculum.

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and maths. Most schools don't teach engineering as a discrete subject but STEM is, like you say, very broad and covers aspects of the curriculum such as design and technology, computing or ICT, maths and science.

Many of these topics are also interlinked. So for example with computing, you may be doing an element of engineering when designing on a computer but computing also covers maths if you’re doing coding. It’s all of the subjects under a broad umbrella and they’re all interlinked.

Why does excellence in STEM matter so much?

We need to prepare pupils in schools to enter the workforce of the future. There will be challenges and skills needed that we don't even know about yet, particularly in STEM subjects, with technology advancing as rapidly as it is.

Change always works best when it's formalised, so by making STEM a strategic priority in your school or trust or putting a STEM link role on your board, it's a great way to focus on it in a world of competing priorities. It means there's someone on the board with that focus who can ask the right questions and drive improvement strategically.

Diversity in STEM more broadly is a problem - why is that?

Many prospective students don’t feel like STEM is for them, especially if it's underrepresented in their schools and society more generally (girls and ethnic minority students are historically underrepresented in STEM careers). We're not saying that STEM should be prioritised over everything else, but that pupils should be open to pursuing it as a career regardless of their background.

The charity Mission 44 was founded by racing driver Lewis Hamilton and part of its focus is on inclusivity in education and creating opportunities for young people to pursue great careers in STEM. We asked Mission 44 to explain why it's so important to think about inclusivity and diversity when looking strategically at STEM education in our schools.

Mission 44 believes that in order to create a fairer, more inclusive future for young people, our schools must reflect the diverse student population, offering a variety of perspectives and role models. We want every student to feel a sense of belonging, where they see themselves and their communities reflected in teachers, school leaders and governors.

STEM education opens up a world of possibilities, making science accessible and exciting. By promoting diverse leaders within STEM roles and an inclusive education system that benefits every child, we can inspire the next generation to explore and excel in STEM fields.