A stark gender gap in young people’s interest in engineering and science and a sharp decline in practical science have been identified through a new survey by the Royal Society in partnership with EngineeringUK, with support from Wellcome.
The third Science Education Tracker looked at the responses of 7,000 young people around their attitudes to and experience of science education and careers. The results make worrying reading given current and projected future workforce shortages across engineering and technology.
Engineering careers are seen as creative and versatile by most school students and over half young people believe they could become an engineer if they wanted to. However, for those not interested in a STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) career, girls are more likely than boys to say this is because they don’t enjoy the subjects (57% vs 41%) and that they don’t feel they are good at them (38% vs 20%).
Across all age groups, boys report much higher knowledge of engineering careers than girls and are more likely to say engineering is something for them. Only 12% of girls say being an engineer fits well with who they are compared to 38% of boys. And just 16% of girls think a career in engineering is suitable for someone like them, this is up at 44% of boys.
Doing practical science is the key motivator to learning science (52% of year 7 to 9 students), with girls statistically more likely to say this. Yet, opportunities for hands-on practicals are in decline in school, with only 26% of GCSE students doing practical work at least once a fortnight. With 70% of students across secondary schools saying they want to do more and the appetite for more practical work is higher among students who are generally less engaged with science. This includes students who say they aren’t interested in science or who see science as ‘not for me’. 32% of young people in years seven to 13 are in the ‘not for me’ group and this group is more likely to include girls. Indeed, 36% of girls say science is not for them.