A week last Friday (26th January) a Tory MP asked his Government a question regarding STEM issues, the question came from Andrew Percy who is the MP for Brigg and Goole. His question was “To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to encourage young people to pursue STEM subjects at school, college and university.” The strange thing is that I blogged about this very question the day before it was being asked of Nick Gibb, the Minister who answered the question. My blog followed an almost identical question which was asked in the House of Commons on 19th January by Nicholas Soames. Both questions were responded to by Nick Gibb using very similar information. It is not clear if such questions are intended to give the MPs who ask them something to publish locally to raise their own profile or if they fall asleep when Ministers are answering questions raised by other colleagues. Either way the answers followed a similar pattern. Because my previous blog included the answer from Nick on 19th January, it seems only fair to publish the second answer given on 26th January below:

“The Government is committed to tackling our shortage of STEM skills so we can grow the workforce that a dynamic and growing economy continues to require. The Department is doing this by investing £406 million to increase pupil participation in maths, digital and technical education. This includes a new post-16 maths premium and a new £84 million programme to improve the teaching of computing – both of which should encourage increased take-up of these subjects. The Department has committed to improving STEM careers advice in schools in the recently published Careers Strategy. The Department is also widening the pool of young people that consider engineering as a career through the Year of Engineering campaign, which will showcase the variety and creativity of modern engineering. To improve the development of technical STEM skills, the Department is introducing T levels, which will be developed with employers, and provide progression opportunities into skilled work or higher level study, including degrees.” 

Now to be clear the shortage of STEM skills has been evident for several decades and in reality this could be a moment for the Tory party to blame Labour for not addressing this issue. However the complication if they took such a line is that when they entered the coalition Government the Tories dismantled the solutions that the Labour Party had drawn up and were working on. Perhaps what is needed is a education policy that has cross party support and is drawn up by bodies such as the Institution of Engineering and Technology which I am a member of. The IET is made up of educators in Schools and Universities as well as employers! Maybe we need a few Politicians to ask the IET questions instead of wasting more of Nick Gibbs time!