Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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110. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the strategy of her Department to increase the number of students undertaking science, technology, engineering and mathematics for the leaving certificate; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4401/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Education’s STEM Education Policy Statement 2017–2026, published in November 2017 acknowledges that while there are many strengths in STEM education provision, a number of challenges exist to include the need to increase the number of students choosing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in post-primary schools and the increased participation of females in STEM education.

There has been significant STEM related curricular reform which at Senior Cycle includes leaving Certificate Applied Mathematics implemented in schools from September 2021, Leaving Certificate Art implemented from September 2020 and Leaving Certificate Agricultural Science implemented in September 2019. In addition Leaving Certificate Computer Science has been available nationally as of September 2020. The NCCA is seeking to ensure that the development of the new specifications for Leaving Certificate Physics, Chemistry and Biology will address the need to widen the appeal of the subjects in order to meet the targets of the STEM Education Policy Statement and re-balance gender uptakes.

An advisory group, set up by my Department, has developed a set of recommendations in relation to Gender Balance in STEM in order to ensure improving gender balance, equity and inclusion for our young people. The implementation of the policy statement is already seeing favourable increases in relation to the numbers of schools offering STEM subjects other than mathematics and science. For example girls only schools offering more STEM subjects have increased from 55.7% to 63.3% between 2019 and 2020. The publication and implementation of the gender balance in STEM recommendations will ensure further improvements in the uptake of STEM subjects at post primary level.

It is of utmost importance to provide our young people and their families with awareness of STEM education, the opportunities that exists and to ensure that they can see themselves in these STEM careers. Some of my Department’s work in this area includes ongoing support of informal STEM education such as IWish, BT Young Scientist and Technology, Scifest and my Department’s new partnership with Science Blast. Other work includes an ongoing STEM awareness campaign in conjunction with Science Foundation Ireland.

Development of the second STEM Education implementation plan is underway which will guide implementation from 2022-2026. A public consultation has taken place from 17th December 2021 to 26th January 2022 with further consultations with education partners and stakeholders planned in the coming weeks. The new implementation plan will incorporate monitoring and review of the existing implementation plan and will allow actions to be revised and developed in line with identified needs. In addition to the priorities identified through this consultation the implementation plan will also be informed by the Gender balance in STEM recommendations and STEM and the Arts recommendations which are being developed at present.