The Australian Government’s Department of Education released the ‘STEM School Education Strategy 2016-2026’ to coordinate STEM activities and improve STEM education in schools. This policy recognised that ‘STEM capacity across the population is critical in helping to support innovation and productivity.’  In response to the Strategy, one school system developed their own STEM strategy. This aimed to raise the profile of STEM education in their schools by supporting initiatives that developed critical and creative thinking skills, problem solving capabilities and the effective utilisation of digital technologies which, they considered, are essential in all 21st century occupations.

This school system’s STEM strategy was informed by the two goals of the National STEM School Education Strategy 2016-2026:

1. Ensure all students finish school with strong foundational knowledge in STEM and related skills and
2. Ensure that students are inspired to take on more challenging STEM subjects.

The research utilised a mixed methods approach to explore the following key questions:

• To what extent have the guiding principles in the STEM strategy been achieved through the attention and focus on the broad five areas of focus?
• What future directions, priorities and recommendations are required to enhance the effectiveness of STEM education across the sector’s schools

The overarching finding of this research was that the messaging about the importance and value of STEM education needs to continue to remain prominent in schools. This will need to be done on a variety of levels: systemic administrative level, school level and in classrooms. It was also determined that if schools want all students to be making informed decisions using STEM knowledge in their future lives, then they need to be provided with a full range of tools in their classrooms in order to learn how to do this.

References:

Australian Government : Department of Education. National STEM School Education Strategy 2016–2026. Retrieved from: https://www.education.gov.au/australian-curriculum/support-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem/national-stem-school-education-strategy-2016-2026

Diocese of Lismore. (2017). STEM Strategy: 2017-2019. Lismore: Catholic Schools Office.