Pressure to STEM decline in industry-ready work skills: minister

How the NSW government is addressing the future workforce needs of the defence sector will be under the spotlight at Pacific 2019 Expo and conferences.

NSW Minister for Skills and Tertiary Education Dr Geoff Lee. ‘These are the jobs of the future our students will need to work in and gain skills in.’ Picture: Trevor Veale

It has been said there is a crisis in Australian schools. Just look at this year’s NAPLAN results or the latest release of the OECD’s PISA data — Australian students aren’t performing well and it’s not getting better over time.

As scholastic performance plateaus and even declines, uptake of science and mathematics subjects in senior high school is also in retreat. Worse still, the number of students studying high-level maths, physics, chemistry and biology have declined.

In 2008, just over 31 per cent of the NSW students undertook a maths subject for their Higher School Certificate. A decade later it had dropped to 29 per cent.

How the NSW government is addressing the future workforce needs of the defence sector will be under the spotlight at Pacific 2019 Expo and conferences.

Indeed, many experts predict that the future world of work will specifically require knowledge and skills in science, maths, engineering and technology (STEM).

This is particularly true of the defence sector where STEM capabilities are almost ubiquitous. It’s a complex problem that has been on the mind of Geoff Lee, the NSW Minister for Skills and Tertiary Education.

“The jobs of the future, we know, will have much higher needs for STEM-based subjects. Demand for people to work in information and communications technology, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity — these are the jobs of the future our students will need to work in and gain skills in. As a government and society, we need to promote that these jobs are excellent and rewarding careers.”

How to tackle this looming skills shortage has to start in school, Lee says. To that end, the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been pushing for maths to be made compulsory for all Year 11 and 12 students.

Around 82 per cent of NSW students took a maths subject in 2018, but the NSW government is hoping to nudge the figure closer to 100 per cent with a new course which will focus on numeracy and practical applications of maths in everyday life.

“We all talk about the curriculum being overcrowded,” Lee says. “But when you talk to industry groups, one of their greatest criticisms is that apprentices, in the construction industry for example, don’t have the requisite mathematical skills to embark on their apprenticeship and they have to play catch up. Who pays for it? The training organisation.”

In addition to boosting numeracy among all HSC students, the NSW government is also backing a number of programs aimed at boosting STEM skills among young people.

These include STEMship, a pre-employment program for apprentices, which been recently expanded from the Hunter region to the Shoalhaven. The program was recognised earlier this year as international best practice for developing strong local partnerships between regional-development organisations, industry and the vocational-education sector.

STEMship works as a pre-employment program for secondary students to encourage uptake of apprenticeships. The program works with local employers to develop the curriculum, which is based on local industry needs in new and emerging occupations.

Students in the new Shoalhaven program will leave with a Certificate II in aeroskills training, work placement experience and industry visits with partners such as Lockheed Martin, Air Affairs Australia, BAE Systems, Global Defence Solutions and Nowchem.