 Fy hi, rydw i'n byw i ddim yn gwybod i yw 11 yma y Fysoedd Cymru. Rwy'n rŵr i'n gwybod i'n gwybod i'r Gorda MacDonald, i'n gwybod i'r Gil Paterson i'r bwysig i'r Mcdonald i'r Gwyddo. Rwy'n gwybod i'n gwybod i'n gwybod i'r Tabas Scott i'r ffyrdd ei ffyrdd yn fwy oes yn gwybod i'r Roe have heard that RoeHne Macai is coming but is running late due to traffic this morning. Agenda item 1 is a decision to take business in private. Members can take agenda item 3 in private. Agenda item 2 is a session on STEM to inform the remit of the committee's future inquiry on this topic. I would like to welcome to the meeting this morning Lorna Haye, teacher in Chukur primary school. Professor Ian Hunter, research professor of molecular microbiology at the University of Strathclyde, Dr Fiona McNeill, associate professor of computer science at Heriot-Walt University, and representing the Llanus Society's group of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Tony Skullian, who is a computing science teacher in St Kenntigern's Academy, Liz Turner, head of corporate responsibility at the BT group, and Professor Ian Wall, former chair of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Committee, Stemic, and Taluk Yakub, director of Equate Scotland. I am not going to ask the committee members individually to introduce themselves, so I would like to have a brief introduction from our guests this morning, and just a brief outline of their interests in this area. I think that I will go around the right hand side and invite Taluk. Thank you very much for inviting me along to speak today. Equate Scotland is the national expert on women's participation in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and the built environment. My scope is about gender inequality in classrooms, in universities and colleges and in industry. The participation of women across STEM has been stubbornly low, and in some cases it is decreasing, particularly in computing science. From my perspective, it is about what we are doing to tackle both societal inequality and stereotypes, but also what we are doing across the education pipeline to make multiple interventions. I will probably focus right across. Our work at Equate Scotland is 16 plus, so from apprenticeships onwards, but we do a lot of partnership work with those who are working in schools. I am a professional scientist and an academic. I have worked in industry. I am a member of the Scottish Science Advisory Council. When all of you were elected in 2016, all of your manifestos talked about STEM and some of the issues that Taluk has just talked about. Subsequent to that, and indeed with the SNP lead forming the Government, we will probably talk about it. There was a framework developed, a strategy for STEM implementation by the Scottish Government. With the chief scientific adviser Scotland, Professor Sheila Rowan, I co-chaired the external reference group that helped on the advice on that. Subsequent to that, there is an implementation group, which essentially involves, to be frank, employees of the Scottish Government in delivering the strategy. I now co-chair the external advisory group, reporting to the minister with Sheila Rowan on that. I have chaired two committees, in fact. First of all, SEAG and, subsequently, STEMEC, both of which write long and detailed reports fully evidenced for the Scottish Government. The latter one, the STEMEC report, was said to be the basis of the science strategy for learning and teaching, although a good chunk of what we had in it did not really appear. That is one area. I am also a fellow of the RSE and a member of the Education Committee, and recently we published a revised version of our Tapping All Talent, which is about the role of women in science and technology. Thirdly, one of the key strands of work coming out of the SEAG and the STEMEC report is interdisciplinary learning, which I want to emphasise is not solely a STEM issue, it is about education in general and involved humanities and every discipline you can think of. Nevertheless, it often arises in STEM because people get even more siloed than normal in, say, chemistry than they do in English literature, which is a slightly amorphous boundaries. The first two are tapping all our talents and their reports. I think that the issue is in general that, although there is always new research and new ideas and so on, the question is implementation, and this is not one of those reports that has gathered dust on the shelf, but it is not one of those reports or series of reports that is being implemented with vigour and convictions required, and it would seem to me that a parliamentary committee is one of the ways in which it can be tested if Governments of any stripe are delivering what they need to do to deliver good science and technology education. On the IDL, this is one of the four contexts for the curriculum for excellence. It is one of the fundamental building blocks, and what we like to think is to take that analogy of the foundation, and then up on that you build the pillars of the disciplines, and it is the lintels across disciplines. Only once you have the lintels, you do not have something—well, you can see an example at Stonehenge where part of it is falling down, but part of it is still standing, which bits of standing are the ones with the lintels. This is a key area for your development. You had a major conference last month, six weeks ago, and it was very successful. It was one of the most successful conferences around education in Scotland, and because, of course, it united everybody—universities, colleges, schools, primary offices involved in the administration of education and so on, so I am hoping that this is an area that the committee will pay particular attention to in the coming period. Hello, I am a primary school teacher in Fife, with a particular interest in engineering. That is where my passion lies. Last year, I did a postgraduate certificate in engineering STEM learning. During that time, as part of my initial research, I went into industry and I interviewed 33 engineers about their career inspiration, and also about something called engineering habits of mind, which was a term derived by Bill Lucas in thinking like an engineer to talk about the characteristic ways that engineers think and act. I have built my pedagogy around that. We have had a big push in our school to really see the importance of early intervention in terms of engineering. We know that the statistics are there to say that the rate at which the industry is progressing, we are simply not going to have the people to fill those roles. We know that people are not choosing those options at high school, particularly young females. There is a lot of research. The Aspire's research said that if children are not engaged in STEM by age 10, they will not make those subject choices. It is my belief that if there is an inquiry into STEM, we need to be targeting primary education, because that is where we need to build engagement. My experience is that through my research that by engaging children in engineering activities, they are increasing the likelihood that they are then going to choose those subjects later. In fact, there was some research by Kiwana Ital that was investigated by the UK by the lowest proportion of female engineers in the EU, and they said that creating an enjoyment of engineering might be as significant as attainment in terms of the likelihood of a child choosing those subjects. That is where I am coming from, really focusing on the engineering aspect of it. It is not something that I had access to when I was at primary school, so that is where we need to focus. There are issues that we might come on to discuss about teacher confidence or lack thereof. How do we develop effective CPD because it is long-term engagement in CPD that will make a difference to learners? Obviously, there are issues through the gender bias and things like that that I think need to come into that. Thank you, Ms Turner. Hi, good morning. I should start by saying that I am neither a teacher nor a scientist. I head up BT's corporate responsibility programme, but a big area that we concentrate a lot of investment and activity in is around digital skills and employability skills generally. BT employs around 7,900 people in Scotland, so we employ one in every eight people that are in the IT and communications sector in Scotland. Obviously, as a business, it is important to us that the pipeline of talent is coming through, but there is a wider issue for me, and my area of expertise is really around how, as a business, we can support education, government and other partners to help to deliver the digital skills that are needed for both the jobs of the future but also the kind of life skills that we take outside the mainstream schooling system. It is also around the digital inclusion of how we get people who are not currently online to get the skills and the confidence to get online. Within school, there are a number of programmes that we have been involved in. Barefoot is one that is probably particularly relevant for discussions today. I am backing up what other people have said. It is very much about engaging people at a young age, at a young age at a primary level and recognising that the skills are going to be required, whatever type of work they go into the future. For general life skills, we have also been working with young engineers and science clubs for over 20 years, and we also support the digital extra fund. Those are a couple of initiatives that we have been involved in for a very long time. Last but not least, there is an issue around female engagement. We reiterate what other people have said. We are finding it really difficult as much as we want to get more females into engineering apprenticeships and graduate schemes. They are just not there in the volume that we need them, so that is an area that we would like to see addressed. I am representing the Learned Society group, which is looking into STEM education. I am a member of the British Computer Society, who I represent on the LSG. We meet quarterly at the RSE, and we talk about all kinds of issues around STEM education in Scotland. It includes all the Learned Society's Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and Biology, the Scottish Mathematical Council and so on. We prepare various submissions for the Government from time to time. The most recent one was last month, we did one on subject choice at high school and how that is impacting on the number of young people studying STEM. We can sort of separate the things that we mostly discuss into two main areas. One is the issue of teaching, which is a huge issue. There is massive shortage of STEM teachers as a computer scientist. I am really aware of this. There are very large numbers and increasing numbers of high schools in Scotland with no computing staff at all, where young people just can't take those qualifications. It is not just a computing, it is pretty bad in maths, it is bad in chemistry, it is bad in physics. This is a huge issue. There are also issues with keeping teachers in the post once they are assigned them. In fact, even it seems with keeping teacher trainers in the training course and to go on to become teachers is a big drop off there. We are concerned about how much STEM there is in primary schools and whether primary teachers have the right sort of preparation and background to be encouraging young people in primary schools to be interested in STEM and whether they are getting the right kind of support in their career-long professional development to support the children like that. The other side of things is how we encourage young people to take STEM subjects. The number of young people taking STEM subjects in high school is going down. Over the last five years, we have seen the number of hires overall increase, but the number of STEM hires is going down, and it is going down particularly in some subjects, notably computing, but it is a problem for most of the STEM subjects. We think that the fact that they have fewer choices now is an issue of how many people take STEM, and also the university STEM courses that require multiple STEM qualifications. If you are only taking six, not fives, that is a problem. Of course, the gender imbalance is keeping a lot of people away from STEM subjects. Outside my work with the LSG, I have also done a lot of work with outreach with young people, but also parents about how we enthuse young people about science and engineering and make them feel that this is exciting and something that they can see themselves engaged in. I also do a lot of work with gender issues. I was on the tapping all our talents board with Taliad, and I was particularly looking within that into what is going on in the schools, not just schools but early years, and how we are steering girls away from STEM and what we can do about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Toni Scullion. I am a computing science teacher from West Llywain. Falling up from what Taliad and Fiona have both said, there is a mass of lack of females who take computing science, and the figures are absolutely shocking. I have made it my absolute mission to close this gender gap. I am trying to do that as well as being a computing science teacher in my classroom. I have founded my own charity called Dress Codes, and I have just done that on the side, but I have managed to gain funding from JP Morgan, which is fantastic. It has really helped me to begin to roll out across the country, but it is also trying to bridge the gap between industry and education. I have had a lot of success with that, particularly with three of my senior girls called the Turing testers. Recently, they partnered with the data lab, and we ran the first international women in data science event of their data fest. It was all done by these three amazing girls, so it is just to really try and empower girls and show them that they are connecting with industry and giving them that support, that they really can make a difference. No biggie, but I am going to close that gender gap. That is all really helpful. I expect to have quite a free flowing discussion, so if you can indicate to myself or the clerks if you want to come in on a particular subject, I am going to go to the members as anyone wants to have an opening question. On the gender thing, what do you think the barriers are to that? Is there anything obvious that makes you think that girls will not go through those subjects? I am going to unveil a big secret for my dress code, but everything that we do in my dress code club but then we also have hackathons in industry. The big secret is everything that I do, and that is the exact same thing that I do with boys in my classroom. I do not think that you would need to tailor it to be more girly or anything, and I do not believe that at all. I know that if we speak to a lot of my first year girls who come up and speak to the seniors, they have no idea about the gender gap, so I think that it is more giving them the space, using a particular language. I do not think that making a big deal out of it helps to be honest and to give them creativity. All the things that I do in my classroom, as well as dress codes, is that you can make whatever you want, and we are there just to facilitate it. I think that a major thing that has to change would be a more modern pedagogy approach. For example, the computing curriculum is really good. It has all been changed, so it has been very hard. I think that it is better. As you had said before, there is a lack of upskill of teachers that needs to happen. Like web design, a lot of people still use notepads, and it is just not as exciting as other things that are out there. It is time, times the biggie. Teachers need the time to just or someone to pick up and play resources to go. That is amazing. It has been tried in testing and works with girls. That is what I am trying to package in dress code and roll it out. It is a really difficult question, but role models, creativity is the biggie. I find working with teams, not just by themselves, because with the club, the reason I started that was because we always had a computing club, and girls would come along, but then they would stop coming. When we asked why, they were like, none of my friends come, so now we make it that it is just a girl's club, but it is just the same as what we do with the boys, but it is literally just having the space that they can see more friends come, and then they see other girls doing it. It is role models, not in industry, but within your own school. It is a little hard question, but hopefully it helps. No, thank you. That is helpful. Lorna, you wanted to come in on that one. Yes. Coming back to your question, a lot of it to do is with perceptions, and girls need to be seeing positive female role models within STEM. Our journey in our school with STEM, in particular engineering, has gone on for a couple of years now. We always start the year with asking the boys and girls whatever age they are, please, can you draw an engineer? Going back to the very first time we did it, it was an endless list of Bob the Builder, in the overalls with the hard hat on, with the tools, and that was what was perceived with both boys and girls. Two and a half, three years down the line, both boys and girls are drawing a mix. We still have Bob the Builder, but we also have female engineers. Part of that is because we are exposing the children to positive female role models, both physically the engineers that we get into the school, but also through literacy. There are books such as Rosie Revere, engineer, eggypec architect, for the younger ones, but there are a lot of initiatives online. Primary engineer, who I am an ambassador for, does an engagement where children can discuss, like it is an online chat with engineers, and it is a whole host of engineers, male, female, young, older. There is also an initiative that I do with my kids called I am an engineer, get me out of here, and the children are hugely engaged with that. They are seeing young females in those positions, and that brings that to the forefront. I remember when we first had a relationship with primary engineer and we were going to be building these cars and we said to the class, we have this engineer to come and work with us, the door opened and in walks, I think that she is a 24-year-old girl, really attractive, long hair, and the class literally just went, you know, so it's just turning the, so I think, you know, in the media and within education, we need to be providing young girls with these positive role models from all aspects of STEM. What Tony and Lorna have said is absolutely right, and just to emphasise a couple of things within it, the issue around women's spaces, girls' spaces is really important because it is about doing something to detract from what is going on elsewhere. So we can do, you know, an assembly where we have a role model, but it's actually that sustained activity. Over time, single intervention doesn't work, we know it doesn't work, so sustained intervention over a longer period of time requires investment, particularly with young women, but I would emphasise the need for those women's spaces so that they don't feel like they are, can take a backseat because the boys know more, which is the perception that they have. I would also like to emphasise what Tony said about not changing what engineering or computing or chemistry is, it's not to make chemistry into a perfume kit, which I have actually seen and rolled my eyes heavily at. It's not about changing what science is, science works the way it does, but the only difference is having those spaces where we encourage and develop confidence in girls and women. The same thing that I would talk about is the gender stereotyping that we have, so there's work to be done with parents because the conversations that happen within the classroom aren't enough, it's also what's going on within the home, so it's about raising the literacy around STEM for the general public as well. Lastly, it's about sexism within classrooms, so Girlguiding Scotland has done a lot about this. We need to tackle language and sexism, whether that's teachers or pupils around what's going on in the classroom. It's one of the reasons that Equate Scotland is working with Edinburgh University on the new course for teachers who have been in the computing industry and are reskilling as teachers, going in and doing gender equality training for those teachers so that they feel equipped in the classroom to deal with those things and that they are not reinforcing gender stereotypes in the classroom, too. In a way, I think what other people have said, but I think that the fundamental issue here is socialisation. What happened in computing in the early years was that women were very strong in computing and doing a lot of the important programming. In the 1980s, home computers became available and were heavily marketed at boys, and it became something that boys did at home and girls didn't. That's when we see the rise of the kind of image of a computer scientist as someone who's very nerdy, very male, a very specific type of person, and that is ubiquitous in culture. You look at the things that young people are watching on television and stuff, you see this echoed again and again and again, and this is what they're always being presented with as what a computer scientist, what a scientist, what an engineer is, and that's really hard to combat all these things about role models, so it's so important. I really agree with that it's really important with teachers. Teachers have a huge role in this, but not just computing teachers, but I think what's really important is primary schools and especially early years. In the tapping on our talents review, we saw that there's a lot of both unconscious and conscious bias going in schools right down to age three, where the girls are being given his girls toys, here's the boys toys, and the boys toys are the stem-related ones, so I think it's so important that early years practitioners and primary school teachers have a proper grounding in these issues and are much more conscious about how they're approaching it, and then also we need to get into the homes, which is really fundamental. That's more difficult, it's really challenging, but it's really important that they're not getting these messages at home, which at the moment I think most children are. I'm going to go to Mr Greer for another question. Thanks, convener. It falls on from this point, but I'd like to focus specifically on early years and the first couple of years of primary school for a moment. We had a conference in here, I think it was about a year, 18 months ago, that Ian Gray and I spoke at with Microsoft, and one of the issues that was highlighted there is the huge volume of evidence there is now about gender stereotypes in particular being really embedded by the age of seven, and after that you're essentially undoing damage that's already been done. Obviously that's a huge issue at that phase. It's not the only issue with delivery of stem education that starts off in early years and primary, and I'm being interested in what folks' impression is of the state of play in early years and primary one to three at the moment in the delivery of stem education. We're very well aware of the wider socialisation problems that need to be tackled, but how equipped do you think most primary teachers and early years practitioners are at present to deliver that? We've heard some really good case studies you'll learn talking about best practice earlier on. What's the state of play across most schools that you're aware of? I think probably there's pockets of very good work and there's pockets where not a lot has been done and I think it comes down to teacher conference and certainly the research that I looked at and certainly my own setting, again focusing on the engineering aspect, you know, conference wasn't high in teaching these subjects and you know the research will tell you that that's detrimental to the delivery of stem education. I was actually quite surprised when I looked at the report of the first year of the strategy and it said that I think 63 per cent of teachers said that they either agreed strongly or strongly agreed that they were confident in delivering those subjects. Now personally I feel that that figure is quite high and I'm wondering, you know, when I asked my staff in my school I made the point of separating because we're talking about science, technology, engineering and maths and I think you've got to be very cautious if you are bundling those four things together and staying to a teacher. Are you confident with teaching stem? Because you will find that probably the majority are perhaps very confident with maths, possibly with science, maybe with basic ICT but the computer science and the engineering they're not confident at all. So I think to me that statistic is perhaps a little bit misleading and I would suggest that maybe it might be more beneficial to break that down when you're asking teachers and say, let's look at science, technology, engineering and maths, what are your confidence exclusively in those four areas because to bundle them together I don't think it's a true reflection of certainly my experience and other experience that I've seen and it comes down to it's the quality of the CPD. You know, I was fortunate that I've done the postgraduate certificate which when I did it was part funded by Skill Scotland and it was delivered and accredited, it was a primary engineering initiative but it's been delivered and accredited with 60 masters credits from the University of Strathclyde. That's a real high quality piece of CPD that I feel has impacted hugely on my practice but I was lucky that that was part funded by Skill Scotland and I got the professional recognition regardless from the GTC but then I was given the choice if I want those masters credit then I could pay for those myself to Strathclyde University which I decided to do because it was a lot of work and I wasn't coming away with nothing but I think perhaps that for some teachers accessing that high quality CPD to change their pedagogy that's better suited for teaching STEM they're not financially in a position to do that. You know, at now that course is not funded so teachers are looking at nearly £2,000 and that's a lot of money and at the end of it in our profession I had people outside saying oh so what do you get for that do you get a pay rise? Well no I don't get a pay rise I've done it for me and to enhance my teaching but I think we need to think about how do we present the CPD to deliver and increase the confidence and also to share the good practice that's happening you know without we're very we've been fortunate that we've created in our school a real buzz around STEM and we had a big STEM showcase event and lots of people came to that and parents came in and engaged with their children in engineering and STEM activities and the parents were kind of like wow you know I didn't know that this was going on and my child's so enthused by this and what we need to do now is how do we disseminate that into you know the cluster of schools and pass that kind of knowledge on I think. Let's go to just wanted in with a quick supplementary yet. Thank you convener it's just a brief supplementary with regard to teacher confidence because it's quite taken by I think your point Lorna and Tony spoke about upskilling the profession. I wonder going back to initial teacher education I saw in Professor Wall's submission there was a recommendation to consider having and that five in science and a higher mass I think for all primary teachers at initial education level would you both agree with that as practitioners or what's your view? Yeah I think that is a solution I think it definitely gives the it means that that teachers are coming in with a kind of certain certain level of skill I suppose in confidence with with teaching science I think we have to be be careful that you know there's already an issue with recruiting teachers and by raising these goalposts is that going to then you know it's not going to help the situation so as an alternative to rather look once we've got the teachers in what can we do once they're on those initial teacher educations I mean I did the postgrad I came from a previous career I was a PR consultant so you know my training was condensed into a very short time and there were lectures and practicals in science but when you think about what we're asking teachers to do you know we're we're a jack of all trades we're a master of none there's so much there's so many demands with the curriculum of what we're expected to teach you know perhaps we need to look at not create further barriers for people coming into education but once they're on those courses how can we retain them and how can we improve the quality of the of their personal learning I don't know what Tony thanks on that I would also agree like it's a great idea in principle but like that the people getting into the professions really difficult already and I do think you can get someone who's got an excellent like I know in our school if someone's very very good at English and things they don't tend to do sciences so I think that might put a barrier towards it but another solution might be like like at secondary school like I'm the computing science expert so like if there's more freedom in the curriculum to go down and help primary school so like Lorna is saying like upskilling even if it's CPD or providing more opportunity and ease of access for secondary schools to go secondary school teachers to go to primary schools and and help them because I'm definitely not an expert in English or anything else it's really just computing science whereas primary school teacher if there's a particular person in my cluster who's struggling with that like I would be more than willing to but it's just the constraints per school so I do think getting you know having English and maths and science would be fantastic but would that put more people off I think it might although it'd be fantastic because it would mean that they've got you know like a full array of experience that would really roll out in the classroom but definitely there's kids who do English or do science but they don't do all three it's quite rare at our school anyway that's not like a sweeping statement but yeah I think more flexibility between primary and secondary would be really good to help that yeah I've got Professor Wall, Professor Hunter both coming in and they are coming back to you Dr Sinclair I think Dr McNeill sorry Professor Wall just just picking up on that point about qualifications particularly for primary school stuff I mean the first of all the report didn't say you just introduced that you do it over a period of time you wouldn't say to people who are in the last year of school or by the way you've got to get higher maths at something like that so it's you know it's a signposted long before the event and so on you work towards it but mathematics is as necessary as English in you know it's another language it is not a topic like you'll learn some chemistry you can do some chemical work or something like that it's essential to almost any job you're doing in fact recently developed in English literature rely heavily upon computers and detailed analysis and if people can't can't use a spreadsheet properly and things like that then they and understand how they use them properly is really a problem and say and us it just people say you know well it'll put off good teachers but actually good teachers have already passed lots of different exams I mean it's not like becoming a teacher is something you say well look I'm good at we I'm good with children let me loose in a classroom it's a skilled professional job in which you need to develop both technical knowledge and pedagogical skills preferably integrated not like I'm a good mathematician oh and by the way I'm a good teacher actually a good teacher mathematics so I think that's really important but it brings to a wider point I wanted to make chair about what is required is systemic change so on the question of role models role models are good but actually what government and education science and local authorities should be doing it's creating a situation where there are more women engineers coming through then you don't need role models because actually they're just all around the place and you're not surprised when a woman engineer walks into your classroom and that so this is the role models are all very well and it's something schools and low you know it's a local short-term initiative the fundamental issue for Scottish education is how we shift the game you know and that's coming the and so when launa talked about pockets of excellence that are there are more than just pockets I mean there are a substantial number of politics some local authorities are better than others some schools are better than there's no rest question is how do we spread that how do we pass those learnings on and the role of education scotland is really critical here both in its encouragement and support role and there's an inspectorate role and if we come back to the question of equalities if you look as we did at the last five reports in a year of the inspectors into primary schools the the question of equalities was dealt with in each case in one case and two sentences and the others in what centres and it was clearly a formula you know and I'm not saying they hadn't checked it but there was no sense in which the school had had to explain what they did and how they did it and whether they had role models or what they were trying to do to change spaces for girls or things like that you know and so on so there's an easy way in which over a period of time inspectors pay more care for it and it's a strategic systemic change rather than just encouraging you know and exhorting don't want any more encouragement don't want any more exhaustion we want strategic problems practically implemented just a very short point on the the pace of change needed what we in things absolutely true having new teachers who are better informed in mathematics is important but it would take too long to enable that for for the near future and so cpd is probably the solution to that but much more important when you're talking about early years and it's already been mentioned but I just want to emphasise it getting into the homes getting into the communities and publicising that STEM is important for the future of our country is the important issue. Dr McNeill and other companies. A question of science qualifications for primary schools the Lens Society group has been pushing for it to be a requirement that primary school teachers should have at least one level five qualification in science and we do accept that there are issues around recruitment but we feel like the we've maintaining standards is a cynical non that's really important and we need to find flexible solutions to that so well one of the problems with STEM teachers actually is that they have to have higher English which a lot of STEM students don't have but our approach to that is not world let's learn standards to make more teachers come in but let's think about flexible solutions to this so the Scottish Funding Council recommends that the education colleges accept students without higher English on the understanding that they can do it as their training they can get it on the fly there can be flexible solutions to this unfortunately that's not really implemented very much at the moment but I think there are flexible solutions to this so we could accept primary school teachers who don't have any science qualifications and then help them gain those science qualifications as they train so that when they go into the schools they have some kind of solid science foundation. Okay, um less is your question in this area miss Dr Allen are you? Relates really to the question of qualifications in general and the number of people coming out of school with higher in science. Before then before we move on to that subject and as I suppose it's just worth pointing out that the Barcelona plus two two language model um actually forced a requirement for language um which is there which um I suppose set a little bit of a precedent in in terms of requirements for primary school teaching um I'll go to Mr Patterson. My daughter's just entered university and my experience is that STEM is practically not on the agenda with most parents and I think so many parents in my experience are the big influencers in the direction and the subjects that children take so I and I do believe you know from again from just paying attention to what was going on I that influence starts right at primary school so that and it's the point that Ross was making for huge numbers I they're just excluded from it so that's not to say that STEM is not a good thing it's to say that the opportunities that present themselves to parents and children I don't think a lot of people understand what they are so it's what we can do to influence the parents rather than the teachers and the schools etc I think it's an enormous barrier but it's a great opportunity so what can we do to to inform parents what's available? Miss Jacob? I'm linked to that is also um within the scope of whatever is investigated of this committee is the difference between affluent areas in Scotland and their access to STEM whether that is role models from industry coming in whether that is community based learning and we see more of that in affluent areas compared to social and private areas and rural communities in Scotland if we're going to do something about this it has to be Scotland wide it has to be a coherent strategy that's invested in across the board not the lowest hanging fruit where there is already access to opportunity and investment so it's just a if there is investigation particularly in early years in primary school and then parents and community engagement more of that is happening in affluent areas so the emphasis needs to be how do we do that in rural communities and areas of social deprivation? Does anyone else want to comment? I agree that it's absolutely vital I think some kind of public education campaign is really necessary I for example I do a code club at my children's school and one of the parents came up to me and said oh my son's really enjoying this but I don't want to encourage him too much because I feel there's not a lot of career opportunities it's not it's a very crowded market and I was like that's crazy there's enormous skills gap in this market but it and this was a very educated woman who just didn't was not aware of that so I think really somehow spreading that message not just among the parents actually that's really important but also in the schools I think a lot of the schools are not advising the the students as well as they might be about where the opportunities lie. It kind of marries with the research that I did in industry when I did my postgrad and when I spoke to engineers about their career aspirations and inspirations I can't remember the exact statistic but an overwhelming majority of engineers when I asked them why they chose engineering there was some kind of family influence whether it was somebody in the family who either was an engineer or valued engineering as a career choice it's all about building that stem capital and for a lot of people they don't have any stem capital so I believe that the perceptions you know out in the media are exactly what you're saying we need to raise that and then within schools you know doing more of I guess what we've done in engaging getting parents and learners together to to tinker together to realise where you know these skills we're doing here how does that apply to the real life and what are the opportunities outside so that you know when a child says they want to do engineering and then the parent says well that's a good career choice because I spoke to engineers who said that when they told that their parent they wanted to be engineer they tried to persuade them otherwise because for them and their family it wasn't they didn't value it as a career and I think that's that's where we there's an incredibly biased perception of of engineering out there and it's ingrained in society and we need to to work hard to to kind of overcome that. Professor Wall. Just on that we what we need is a reprint and never shoot almost all his heroes or engineers and I mean very successful in all sorts of ways that's by the by just on the picking up on talents point about schools in poorer areas. One of the things I'm involved in I'm chair of SCDI and we run the Young Engineers and Science Club and I'm also on board of the science festival and we run generation science which takes sees 50 to 60 000 primary school children every year but both of these things rely upon private sector funding and some charity and trust and private sector funding and teachers certainly find them extremely valuable it is about having someone come in from the outside and we are very careful about gender balance and the way we do things and all the rest of it so I mentioned that because I don't think it's that interesting but also that any discussion of these issues whatever it might be as it moves around the table needs to be set in the context of resources I mean it's not difficult to say well if we did this you know it would change things and it would the question is do we get the right resources put in the right place to do it. Two points so from what Ian said and Tilly about equity like I'm a Scottish attainment and schooling vessel then so we've got high levels of deprivation but we do really well with girls but one barrier that we really face is there's all these amazing initiatives like the cyber security Christmas lectures and all that but a lot of the time sometimes we can't go because we don't we don't have the money you like for buses and that's just such a simple thing and you don't want to ask the kids because we know that they know their backgrounds they don't they don't necessarily have the money either and that's just one simple thing that could easily be fixed if there was some sort of opportunity or budget that you know we could apply for because it's just so difficult like I have to beg for money but it works but it's really really hard and it's definitely something that puts teachers off and then from what Mr Patterson was saying as well about trying to you know like raise aspirations off like get parents involved and things one simple initiative that was used in Sky Livingston recently they done our parents night and they brought the kids along and it was literally they spoke to all the staff in Sky and it was fantastic and really well received so again two really simple things that might might be able to help. Thank you very much. I'm going to go to Smith Smith. Thank you convener. I've just got two questions both of clarification. First one to Dr McNeill is it the recommendation that if at all possible a primary school should have a dedicated science teacher because that was very much the recommendation. I think Ian Gray and I were at the conference that the Royal Society of Chemistry made that policy recommendation five years ago. Can I just be absolutely clear that is your recommendation? No, what the LSD has been recommended is that all primary teachers have some science qualification not that any of them have particular skills in it but they have at least in that five so any primary teacher has a basic understanding. It sounds like a great idea to have a science teacher in primary school but that's not something we've particularly discussed or pushed in the LSD. Okay my other question Professor Wall in your introduction I think you said but correct me if I'm wrong that when you were writing your reports there were various things that didn't make it into the report could you just clarify what these things were? I can't off the top of my head but I could write a letter to the clock. Just be interesting of any recommendations that weren't taken up it would be helpful. Thank you. I mean I could if you'd asked me a couple of years ago I could have reeled it off but it is about it's two and a half for three years so I'm just slightly weak. I asked the question because this committee's been on STEM issues for quite some time and you know criticisms are made and this is not a particular political point at all that all of us are responsible for not delivering on some of the recommendations that have come out of previous studies and I would just be interested to know if there were gaps as to what they were. My primary concern I must say was not that we always took the view as a committee it was our job to make our recommendations as best as we thought fit but it is government's responsibility and duty to determine these things and we can get obsessed with education but there are health issues you know there are transport issues and so on. Government has to make judgments but what did irritate us was that our reports was carefully you know had some like 50 or 60 detailed recommendations and past this approach by most governments of any colour has been and in fact was on the first Seattle report was to then respond to them yes we agree with this and we'll do that this is a good idea but it's too early you know no we disagree with this you know it's that you know nobody's perfect it was that failure to engage and then just pick out the things that they put into the strategy that made us angry we didn't expect everything we suggested and some of them are not not entirely agreed by everybody I mean the discussion about a science specialist in a primary school we were not that keen on it you can see its merits but our worry was then it just becomes a little silo oh well we don't have to do science because you know mrs joseph will do the science and we don't have to bother anymore so you know but never anyway sorry thank you both practitioners have both mentioned clusters in the primary school cluster programme that's not universal throughout Scotland not everyone signs up to that so could you just tell us what that means to you what added value that gives so just in terms of the you know the cluster is just your cluster of primary schools that are feeding into into a secondary school so what I think my point was that you know we are and our school we've had a big push on stem and we're doing a lot of positive things and other people have said what we're doing is very positive but we're on a journey and we need to embed this into into the school and you know and I'm involved in another group that's looking and for five is is how we can kind of bring you know different schools together to share best practice because as I say there's these pockets of what's going on and and that's the best way for teachers to do that but the issue again and we were talking about this before we came in Tony and I is time time is a huge issue for teachers and workload is a huge I mean that that's a whole different issue we've had the whole pay campaign and I know that that's still on going and workload you know is part of that agreement we've been told that will be addressed and it needs to be addressed because to me that you know the even in these sharing events you know it's scheduling the time for those it's the preparation for those you know we had a big stem showcase at our school and all the staff are you know preparing for this in addition to the you know keeping a classroom running with all your subjects your literacy your gym your science your army the whole law and and I think that's a massive a massive barrier that perhaps we you know we need to look at how can we give teachers the flexibility and time you know to to lead on these things and disseminate you know those skills and the strength amongst the clusters because it's all well and good that you know we're putting this out as our school this is on you know gender bias and STEM is on our school quality improvement plan every school has a has a squip and that has been prioritised and for our cluster you know that that's a priority so we're kind of all working together for the same means but we need to make sure that all across scotland all schools are prioritising these issues on their scripts and that all schools within that cluster because if one or two primary schools are doing very good things and I'm not saying you know I'm not saying that we're everything we do is great but we've had success in some areas and there's other schools that are doing amazing things as well but we need all the schools so by the time they come into high school to to Tony there's there's not a big discrepancy in terms of the the skills and the the knowledge that the learners are showing I mean sort of what you what you think I know with my school we again we've got like the primary cluster who are like feeder primary schools they all come to our secondary and then we've got of course secondary schools so there's 11 secondary schools in West Sultana. As like computing we have very little actually none we have no communication with primary schools when it comes to computing but I know there is work done with English and maths and then even with secondary schools like Lorne was saying we get one designated day I think like a year with a specific set of secondary schools who are close to us but they're not like they do totally different things and there's no wriggle room or flexibility to say actually we we do similar things to this school so we'd quite like to go over there and there's none of it like they encourage it they want you to do it but there is no time to do it apart from one day that you're forced to work with people and bring things along and like you had says it's like a it's just a one-off it's not like a on-going thing where you can really build up and work together I actually find it easier like we were talking about this earlier like there's so much bureaucracy in schools and it's so difficult to get into off the ground that I genuinely think it's easier to make waves across the whole of Scotland and so social media and you know that like like my little charry that I've got going like little cyber security competitions and things it's so much easier to make waves across the whole of Scotland as opposed to my school which is ridiculous so I can't give you an answer but I think just teachers need to be brave and just do it instead of you know use social media instead of going through maybe the official protocols because it's so hard I don't know if the point of your question was also about the maturation of the cluster programme in various geographic locations throughout our country it's more mature than others are two practitioners obviously in locations where it's very mature but in some locations it's hardly started and so that's important to note and to try and accelerate the adoption and in that context there's also of recent the recent year the formation of the regional improvement collaboratives so-called ricks and they sit at a very high level in in this infrastructure and ricks seem to be I've been well not allowed as it's pejorative but but they're certainly given largesse to create their own agendas their own priorities their own regional issues and it's sad to me sometimes to see the lack of stem issues in some of the script that's now being written by some ricks on the question of clusters I mean they are absolutely vital it's I mean they cover so many things it's about transition from primary to second the point was touched upon it's about engaging again talk about specialist teachers there are specialist teachers in secondary schools they're in your cluster you know if you want to get a bit of you know strong support from a chemistry teacher a physics teacher a maths teacher it's that if there's a functioning cluster that works really well SSERC has a programme where it does work with secondary schools and their clusters to develop their science because it's a science initiative that it's funded by the government but it's a very slow they're doing a number of local authorities each year and then it's done once and left and it needs to be sustained I couldn't underestimate the power of clusters but it does lead on to a question that's been raised by a number of the people speaking today about the question of time in schools and one of the areas that was ignored in our report was our point about time in schools and a lot of the things we talk about require quality time by teachers to engage whether you're creating ideal or you're doing proper cluster work and things like that you know to have a cluster meeting of secondary school teachers and primary school teachers takes half a day you know and that's quite a lot over school time and there is all schools now are running on incredibly tight I mean you're fortunate to have active teachers here because if one teacher goes ill no one leaves the school I mean it's really is quite disastrous now but at the same time we do have a culture of overwork in schools you know there's an obsession as long as the pupil is sitting in front of a teacher she must be doing okay and that's just not true and all the evidence shows that so in our report there was quite a section dealing with different one now there are no magic bullets but if you accept that is the problem and then you start working on a number of different things one is to reduce contact time actually I mean there's a very I mean you've all heard of passisalberg I mean you know but one of his dictums is teach less learn more you know and things like that and there are a whole range of issues around there which we try to unpack in the report and said this is the way to go forward because if you release time then a lot of the things that are talked about become much easier to achieve Dr Allan Thank you I'm not going to open up the whole debate or whole discussion rather about subject choice because the committee is going to do a piece of work on that in itself but just to pick up on a an issue that Dr McNeill raised right at the beginning about the number of young people coming out of school with STEM qualifications you mentioned that STEM amongst the increase in number of hires seems to be seems to have declined my understanding was at higher maths there are more young people coming out of school than before with higher math so is this firstly is this more localised as I suspect it is to some specific science subjects and also I suppose related to that is what can we do in the first three years the broad general education of secondary to ensure that people feel they've a strong enough grounding to take up science subjects in feather than sex the other well I'm afraid I don't have the figures in front of me I can find the figures for which are going up and which are going down and certainly it does affect some some stem subjects more than others and is always the case computing is probably the worst it's certainly going down quite alarmingly in computing other stem subjects so maybe a little bit more stable so looking into the details or I agree that's really important and I can find the find the data and send that around if that's useful in terms of what we can do to enthuse them I think if you're if you're forcing them at the end of s3 or even in some schools at the end of s2 to choose six subjects I think however it's always difficult to it's always going to squeeze out subjects that are not the core subjects they've been studying all the way through I think the more ingrained stem is in in the broad general education phase not just in in s1 to s3 but also in primary school the more they're getting stem the more they're seeing that stem is something they understand something that leads to things they find interesting the more likely they are to take stem qualifications later on so just strengthening stem education the whole way through I think is is really important. I think that the we're all sort of in agreement about strengthening stem throughout education but for me the focus needs to be at primary school level my daughter's school for example they now pick their subjects at the end of first year so I feel that if you're not engaging them with the science in the primary school they're just not going to pick those subjects by the time they get to secondary school and I wanted to pick up on a point that Tony made earlier about lifting news resources again I'm not advocating there are lots of great resources out there for teachers it's back to time it's about back to confidence but if we look specifically at the barefoot resources which are now being used in about 69 per cent of primary schools in some shape or fashion it's all about helping teachers build the confidence if they don't already have that to teach computational thinking and this also picks up on the point about how do we engage parents it's about not necessarily talking to a seven-year-old or their parents about a career in computing science it's about talking to them about the importance of computational thinking across all the subjects and teachers want those resources that they can use across the curriculum so there's something about not treating things in silos and looking at them as a cross-curricular way and it strikes me that if those resources those lifting news resources that are you know matched the Scottish curriculum don't exist for secondary schools then that's something we should look to explore develop add on to Alasher's point and masculine they pick in second year and but then what happens is you have to drop so if you decide not to pick any same subjects you're not allowed to pick it up like it's just you just keep dropping and it's just it's just bizarre like you don't know what you want to be when you're you're 12 a lot of time changes and and if that like the subject choice does not include the flexibility to pick up something new that you've just halted it right there and then and it's just it's really unfortunate but yeah just like to chip in now Mr Gray add two questions so we're kind of track back to two different strands so if that's okay one is what's supposed to for Tony and Fiona McBae as well so we talked a bit about poor understanding of career opportunities in engineering or computer science and coding but isn't there a problem which is the opposite of that which is that one of the reasons we can't recruit computer science teachers is frankly they can get paid a lot more if they work in industry and how on earth do we deal with that so that was one question the other was I suppose really for the two Ian's to Professor Ian's the in your introduction Ian you said the STEM report well two things in the submission you made you made the point that we've been here before in 2003 in 2012 and again in 2016 and then you say that while you wouldn't say the strategy is not being implemented is not you would say it's not being implemented with the urgency and vigor required I think was was was what you said and I just wondered if you could enlarge in that and I wondered if Ian had a view on that as well because you're involved in the implementation group was as you pointed out um how you whether you felt that was true or what the difficulties were in actually taking it forward make me the first question yeah well that's I mean that's undoubtedly a huge issue that we don't have enough computing graduates at all so industry is desperate for them industry pays them very well industry is quite aggressive at attracting them um and so there's just not enough students go around and teaching loses out for sure I mean the solution to that is to get enthused young people to study computing more and get more teachers into school so that more people are coming through doing computing industry so that salaries get pushed down in the industry yeah so actually the salary question is very interesting we had a Judy Robertson at Murray House a school of education has been doing some really interesting research around salaries the salary difference between coding it's computing industry and teaching and it's not nearly as big as you would think so there are people in the tech industry making huge amounts of money but most people are making a little bit more than teachers but not at this not a huge difference and I think the students don't understand that and also perhaps they will see themselves as being the ones who are going to get the star job at rock star north or whatever um so but I think that promoting teaching as a as a really rewarding career and a career that is that it has a decent salary it's not a poor salary it's not amazingly high but it's decent um promotion is really important there um and also as I was saying this flexible entry requirement I've had in the last four years I've had three of my best really excellent students who really want to go into teaching none of them had higher English all of the all of the education institutes they applied to said absolutely not you have to take higher English before we'll even consider you which means taking a year out they can't afford to do that lost to the teaching industry so flexible approaches without lowering standards but flexible approaches is really important but promotion of teaching the industry comes into universities and it grabs the students and it sells itself it gives them all kinds of freebies and and it's really visible and teaching is just not visible and it really needs to be I think that's really important to build on if you want this point as well um I think it's just to show kids and again get them in early at high school and things encourage them show them what's out there because I think a lot of people just think computing is just being a programmer you know like being a software developer and you're just sitting by yourself and it just isn't that there's so much out there so like I've got a little part of dress code I'm doing a choose computing science campaign that I'm going to roll out across the country um and just to try and raise awareness to teachers as well that you know big up the jobs like you can be a designer if you're really creative like they will pay massive amounts of money for that but then also like try and keep them in the classroom but you could be like me um you know you could also help and try and get them in but I think it's to try and show all the the jobs out there as well. Oliver, do you want a small supplementary question? Convener on this this topic I just wonder whether I've obviously only got sort of one representative industry as such here but whether there's more industry can do and you know I worry because for for even for a rock star or for other people there comes an eventual point where if you're taking everyone out of the teaching pool and not helping bring those new skills skills through surely as a business you kind of get to a point where you have quite a big problem in that there's no one to to there's no one to fulfil your needs and it's whether there's a link up between teaching shortage and businesses and whether there's more industry can be doing. It's first your points first and then we'll come to that one if that's okay so if I could bring Professor Wall in first. I mean the point you make about the number of reports that have been is partly an answer to Ian's earlier comment about well if we did something about improving the standards of teachers starting teacher you'd take a long time to fix but actually if we'd started in 2003 we'd have had 16 years worth of fixing already and so on so I think there is a there is a problem I think that we've not touched on so far it's about the administration of education I mean Ian did refer to ricks and so on now whatever their merits or strengths it is an administrative restructuring rather than addressing an education issue and it is the case that if you look at local authorities they've lost their qio's well actually I'm old enough to remember when local authorities had subject specialists and then they became qio's and the number of them reduces the number of school teachers continues to reduce proportionately and so on the ricks maybe have some money but I suspect compared with that local authorities used to spend on these issues 20 years ago it's really a small pot in the ocean the role of education Scotland the inspectorate and things like that these are quite critical to the success of education and if they're motoring in the right way and often a lot of what is done by all politicians and the civil servants to respond to them is really really short term I'm not talking I mean it you know one minor change in a figure is either a triumph beyond parallel or a disaster in which Scottish education is going to the docks you know I mean it's just and if you look at the and I mean all of the politicians of all parties play this game and it's a game because it's meaningless and actually it's counterproductive to what we're all trying to do and if you look at the the current administration's report on their STEM tragedy for this year it's a really poor piece of work I mean if it was submitted as an essay to a school teacher you know a report on on a on a on a project that which is what it is it's a project that has been established by the government to be carried through with lots of good stuff in it actually it would get I don't know C minus if you're lucky a D plus no I think it'd be a fail actually I mean just look at the figures in them you know I mean the figures it's a piece of flim flam and it should be about a quarter of its length if you take out all the visuals and meaningless stuff and all the rest of it and it's symptomatic of a problem that is not true of this it's not a you know it's not one party's problem it's actually it's across the piece and in some respects we're being let down because there are a good recommendation there's good work you have good officers but actually it's you know beckon call and very and a shortage of the resources needed strategically to say with confidence right we're going to be doing this for the next five years and we don't expect answers in year one or even in year three except we're beginning to see the glimmer of hope in year three and by five we're actually beginning to motor improving education system is a long-term strategy and that's why reports such as we have but others have done tapping oil turnstores are really valuable to society but what is more valuable is an administration with a small a and a big a that puts them into place in a professional manner. We've been talking about the resource that the Scottish Government deploys on this when I got into this it was also as I mentioned it as a professional scientist all of us have been signed up to STEM all of us have been in outreach for for me a number of decades now and what impact was this having we've been talking over the last 15 years so are we making a difference that's that's the big question and and Mr Gray asked me to comment specifically on what's happening right now I'm just going to hold up two pieces of paper if TALAP was actually on the group that that we look to advise on the policy this is data sets where we actually they're not perfect they will never be perfect they were this is the may 2017 and then we upgrade it now to the turn of last year are we making a difference and the report that you refer to is trying to capture that if I were to be honest a lot of the changes that are reported in the first report of the STEM strategy which came out in February were actually already in process before this action took place but it's important to look annually at this to see that progress is being made or where it's not being made to address that rather than come back in five years time and say it didn't happen in the same way that you were on your initial submission saying we did this five years ago and not a lot has happened I think it's important to also emphasise that the current five years strategy actually bridges into the next Scottish Government because there will be an election before the end of that five-year period and I think it would be important to take stock four years into it which is when the cycle for re-election of MSPs comes up to see what has happened okay um if you can return to Oliver's point which is about the industry engagement and I said earlier on you talked about whole scotland strategies and about inequality for rural areas and I I think it's um we had the example of sky coming into to um the west low there and I do have a concern that industry engagement if you're talking about rural areas deindustrialised areas if they don't have the sort of high tech and high end engineering companies there are people missing out so um just a little addition to that sorry convener my question is more what industry is doing to help encourage people into teaching rather than concentrating on their immediate recruitment needs okay I misunderstood that because I worry I worry I mean obviously the government set up a scheme to help encourage teachers to retrain or people in industry to retrain into teaching but I think certainly I have a perception that the industry is a bit reluctant to let people go and at that graduate recruitment level they're more interested in getting the available people now than letting or encouraging some of those people to go back into teaching sorry I misunderstood that so in Oliver's point about teaching, Ms Turner did you want to say that? Yeah I'm not really sure I can you know speak conclusively about the industry and I'm not sure that we do anything to encourage people into teaching it's something I'd certainly happily take back and discuss with colleagues that I'm not aware that we do anything proactively in terms of bursaries or or that type of thing or if that's what you were meaning Oliver sorry and what I would say coming back to the point about the rural is I think that's a really genuine point because you know a lot of the IT and communication big companies are perhaps central belted etc although to be honest with technology and flexible working and homeworking you know an organisation like us we have we have people all over the country and so for example we have people who go out and volunteer to run free workshops for barefoot they're happening everywhere around Scotland and to address the rural issue where we had requests from primary schools perhaps in very very remote islands etc they're now running those workshops streaming them online for them it's not the perfect solution but it is you know about using the technology in the best way and making sure that those rural areas are not missing out on that and everything that we provide around barefoot is free and it's downloadable so they don't have to come to a central location to have that training perhaps in the way that they do with cpd training etc we also work a lot with partners we talked about young engineers and science clubs so we've also trained people in those teams who now deliver barefoot as an example as part of the cpd training offering to teachers and again that means that they're out and about in rural as well as urban areas so we do we're very conscious of that you know how do we find ways around that problem miss yaka on the point about industry the issue of course is that there is an immediate need there's an immediate skill shortage across STEM so industry is naturally going to be looking to fill those posts so according to sds there's 12,800 digital technology opportunities every year according to engineering UK across the UK there's a need for 185,000 more engineers over the next five years so it is natural that industry isn't going to be pushing them down the teaching route so it's really for government local authorities to do that push to do that to make visible why teaching is valuable as well and to have as Fiona said that kind of public engagement but one of the things I'm very aware of is that in this conversation we have talked rightly about early years and primary education but the skill shortage within STEM is now and so I think it's also important that it's noted that according to tapping all our talents only 30% of women who graduate with a qualification in STEM stay in STEM related to jobs long term we've got to do something about about that particular pipeline otherwise we're not that the issue is here and now as well as in five years time and one of the things that certainly from equate Scotland's point of view in the research we've done the more industry engagement that women have whilst they are qualifying with it's in college university the higher the likelihood of them staying longer term in the industry because they know what the industry is actually about so our career wise summer placements which is the only paid placement opportunities for women in STEM in the whole of Scotland sees where there's 30% on average staying in the sector there's almost 60% staying in the sector when they go through our placements so that's something that works that's something that we're very aware of needs to be expanded we need to get more industry partners to participate in it it's only been going for six years but we've seen those who came into the first two years are almost twice as likely to stay in the industry long term so there is things we can do within further and higher education with industry to do something about the skill shortage now Miss Hayley, you wanted to come back? I absolutely agree with you that you know I'm coming at this from an earlier perspective but I know that what I'm doing now isn't going to be seen for many many years so yeah absolutely there needs to be addressed on an immediate level and I can't comment about teachers being encouraged from industry but I wanted to come back to the point about those relationships what is industry doing now to engage with schools and coming back to the research in learning to be an engineer by Bill Lucas one of the signature pedagogies that they put forward for the teaching of engineering was authentic learning with engineers and I've seen you know the benefit of that in my own setting we've had over you know last month we had 16 engineers come into school access through the STEM ambassador network which by the way is doing fantastic things but perhaps we need to look at increasing their funding to do more and you know there's two benefits of that in my mind firstly it's creating again coming back to these role models and young people are seeing these engineers they're discussing their ideas for inventions with real engineers it's a real context and as a result of that a lot of young people in the school are vocalising that they want to be an engineer I know what they're saying now they might not necessarily do it later but and but they're not just an engineer you know one girl said to me oh I'm going to be a civil engineer and another one said actually I want to be an optical engineer so there's that aspect but also coming back to the teacher confidence when I started working alongside an engineer building these cars or having the children invent these solutions to problems they come up with I got a huge amount of confidence from working alongside a real engineer but there are you have the STEM ambassador network which is which is doing very well and I believe that the numbers are increasing but there's also a lot of barriers for companies to actually financially don't have the money to release people to come in and work with schools I was lucky my husband's a software engineer and I wanted him to come and speak to children and he had to do that on on one of his days off because just there just wasn't the money to release him to do that so perhaps looking more at funding for companies to actually do you know the engagement like what you were saying you were doing less so I just want to say that I think it's important to do that for the teacher's confidence and their cpd but also in terms of learner engagement I'm really conscious as I saw it miss galdruth and miss Arnan we literally have two minutes left because miss Gillian's got a higher class to get to and their exams in I think nine days so and we don't want to delay it so very very quick contributions for you both if that's okay miss galdruth very quickly obviously schools can only do so much so we've looked today we focus quite a lot on school education but in terms of the industry point I want to go back to that and ask about if there's still a cultural resistance perhaps Lizzie might be able to answer that with regard to stereotypes in industry because I know in Glynrothys you won't like to hear this Lornav but I met the MD of a local company pretty recently who when I said to him he brought a number of his employees with him they were all male where are the women he said we don't have any and we can't get them and obviously it's the best person for the job now I was quite taken aback by that because he did not recognise that he had a corporate or social responsibility to do more as an employer so I just wanted to ask about those stereotypes and whether they're not you you think they pervade in industry I don't think they do pervade in in IT and communications I don't think they do I think there's a genuine desire that industry wants more women and we recognise that they hit the contribution they bring etc so I don't think that is pervading I think what we're saying is there's lots of initiatives we're trying to support through our corporate responsibility I also wanted to mention volunteering and perhaps perhaps in terms of business engagement that's the route to go down but I think most of the big companies are genuinely doing that we give people three days a year to go out and volunteer some of them will be going out and supporting us should like barefoot some of them will be going out and doing other things but tapping into that is important but there are a lot of calls on industry to support lots of things whether it be developing the young workforce individual schools wanting you to come in the sheer volume of requests coming in on a weekly basis means that it's much simpler and better quality for us to provide things that anyone can access so whether that's free downloadable resources etc I just to finalise I know I think there is a genuine desire that people recognise they need to support initiatives whether that be smart stems or where it happens to be programmes that are encouraging women into into the industry definitely very final two contributions unfortunately mrs. Jacob and then doctor so not to contradict that entirely but the reality of course is that I think there is a lot of goodwill to work with schools and do things with girls I think there's a difference in recruiting women and there's an and retaining women there all the women that we work with will describe the fact that they experience sexism that they experience in conscious bias that whilst there is goodwill there is significant amounts that industry needs to do and what we tend to find is that if you look at sea level of a of a company or you look at the management level or you look at the equality and diversity strategy all the right things are there but culture within and particularly middle management there needs to be a significant amount of equality and diversity training learning knowledge so that there is culture change so I think there is a difference between supporting the agenda and pursuing the agenda with schools and then pursuing the agenda by taking positive action measures for example when it comes to women that that bit is not there which doesn't surprise me that you would come across that attitude whilst industry is very supportive I also think that that is also still prevalent almost the same I think there's been great strison industry that's great I would say particularly in the tech industry there's still huge areas of tech industry that are absolutely toxic for women and it's and sometimes I'm hesitant to encourage girls to go into the tech industry because in some areas it's just really hard so the good works being done we really need to continue that that problem is not solved okay I think I'm gonna have to call things to an end today thank you everyone who's taken back this one it's been really really helpful and the committee is going to to do its inquiry shortly later in the year and I'm sure there'll be many more opportunities to engage and if you feel there's anything that you haven't been able to say today that you'd like to to give us we'd be delighted to hear from you again so thank you very much I'm going to suspend for five minutes