Special Initiatives in Mathematics and Science Education

Mathematics is a major focus of education in Northern Ireland, along with literacy. The Department of Education’s 2011 strategy for these subjects, Count, Read: Succeed,²⁹ aims to raise overall standards in literacy and numeracy and to close the gaps in achievement between the highest and lowest achieving students and schools. Actions include emphasizing literacy and numeracy across the school curriculum and its assessment arrangements; supporting high quality teaching to meet the needs of all students, with early intervention to support students who may be having difficulty; strengthening links with parents and communities; and facilitating more effective sharing of best practice. Building on established policies for school self-evaluation and the use of system-level data for benchmarking purposes, the strategy set system-level targets for achievement in the 2011–2012 and 2014–2015 school years, and long term targets for 2020. In Key Stages 1 to 3, targets are set in terms of the prescribed Levels of Progression.³⁰

Launched in 2012, the Delivering Social Change Signature Programme, developed to raise literacy and numeracy outcomes (part of a wider government framework tackling poverty and social exclusion), recruited recently qualified teachers who were not in a permanent teaching post on a two-year fixed term contract to provide additional support for students at risk of underachieving at the end of Key Stage 2, or in GCSE English and GCSE mathematics at age 16. The program ran for two school years in 2012–2013 and 2014–2015.³¹

Science education was a focus of the 2011 strategy, Success Through STEM,³² developed in response to the 2009 Report of the STEM Review, which followed a review of STEM undertaken from 2007 to 2009.³³ The strategy included recommendations for the Department of Education,³⁴ including:

Addressing the disparity in STEM performance among schools
Making STEM learning more inquiry-based
Increasing the focus on the core sciences and mathematics
Developing a STEM continuing professional development framework
Increasing the emphasis on STEM careers advice and guidance
Increasing the number of applications for physical sciences and mathematics places in initial teacher education courses

The STEM Works website was set up as a direct result of these recommendations. Aimed primarily at students and teachers in Key Stage 3, the website includes classroom resources and case studies with the goal of stimulating innovative learning and teaching opportunities, encouraging students to make connections across subjects, and helping students relate STEM to the world of work.³⁵

The Department of Employment and Learning (DEL) has launched several STEM-related initiatives, such as publishing a skills barometer³⁶ and STEM careers booklet.³⁷

The business and charity sectors have provided additional support for the promotion of STEM, examples of which include:

The Northern Ireland STEM Business Group, which has a strong focus on promoting STEM in schools, as exemplified by its publication of STEM career path supplements and its support of the STEM ambassadors scheme³⁸
Sentinus, a not-for-profit educational charity funded by the Department of Education, which works with schools and colleges to deliver STEM educational programs³⁹