Three quarters of the fastest-growing occupations today require skills in science, technology, engineering and maths. Employment in STEM is projected to grow at almost twice the rate of other jobs. And yet, in Australian classrooms, the numbers tell an uncomfortable story.
The scale of the gap
Around 40 per cent of teachers taking science and maths in years 7 to 10 do not hold a tertiary qualification in a STEM discipline. Senior-secondary participation in STEM subjects has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years, and maths and science literacy has declined over the past decade. None of this is the fault of teachers doing their best outside their field, it is a workforce-planning failure.
What actually works
The good news is that this is one of the most solvable problems in education, because we know what moves the needle:
- Upskilling the existing workforce. A dedicated training fund can support tens of thousands of current primary and secondary teachers to undertake genuine professional development in STEM disciplines, rather than a one-day workshop.
- Attracting new graduates. Teach-STEM scholarships, paid partly on starting a teaching degree and partly on completing a first year in the classroom, give maths and science graduates a real reason to choose teaching.
- Setting a hard target. A commitment that all secondary STEM teachers are tertiary-qualified in their discipline turns a vague ambition into an accountable goal.
Why it is urgent
Preparing the workforce for the jobs of the future begins in schools. If we want students to pursue maths and science through to Year 12, and to study coding and computational thinking along the way, they need teachers who can teach those subjects with expertise and enthusiasm. Fix the pipeline, and a great deal else follows.