By Laura Alexander, Physical Sciences Lead Staff Tutor, Open University in Scotland

AT the recent STEM Scotland conference, a primary school teacher was heard asking: “There is so much to cover, is numeracy still important?’”The answer has to be yes. Basic maths skills are the foundations for success in most areas of Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). At my university, the biggest hurdle to success for most students on Stem courses is their ability in maths. It doesn’t matter how much they already know about the subject they are interested in – until they have basic maths skills they will struggle. They don’t need to be “good at maths’” but they need to be confident in the basics.

The Scottish Government has identified Stem as key to increasing competitiveness and tackling inequality. Considerable effort has been put into improving science and technology provision for primary school pupils. Most Primary 7 pupils are enthusiastic about science and technology. So why is the number of pupils taking Stem qualifications in secondary school not rising?

The thing is, pupils don’t make their subject choices in Primary 7. If we want more pupils to choose Stem subjects, we need to enthuse them in S1-S3, in the Broad General Education (BGE) phase of the Curriculum for Excellence. Concerns are emerging that science , technology and engineering initiatives in primary schools are actually making this harder.

There are only so many exciting experiments that can be done in the classroom. Traditionally, these experiments were used in S1 and S2 to demonstrate important concepts and draw pupils into science in S1 and S2 – here were new and exciting subjects you got to do at “the big school”, taught by “real scientists”.

Today, by the time pupils get to secondary school, they will already have seen many of these appealing experiments at primary, which makes it much more difficult for science teachers to enthuse pupils. At primary level, non-specialist teachers using these experiments will not have the knowledge to be able to teach the concepts they demonstrate fully, so the same ground has to be covered again. In some cases pupils end up with misconceptions from primary school science that have to be unpicked by science specialists.

That isn’t the fault of the primary school teachers: we need to accept that young people are very good at asking difficult Stem questions. To answer them without misleading requires at least a degree in the relevant subject (and sometimes more – “so what’s beyond the universe?”).

Stem subjects are often perceived as “hard”. When you ask why, pupils generally focus on maths-related issues. The weak maths skills of many pupils leaving primary school limits what can be taught in science and technology at the BGE stage, when pupils are generally in completely mixed ability classes. In primary schools the teacher knows the abilities of their pupils in all areas, and so can differentiate their science and technology teaching to ensure they engage all students. In S1 and S2 each science or technology teacher is likely to only see the class once or twice a week and therefore will not have the opportunity to get to know them well enough to do this. Inevitably the teaching tends to assume the lowest mathematical abilities, and necessarily moves slowly as basic maths skills are reinforced alongside the science.

So, science and related subjects go from being something where you do a new experiment every week at primary school, to a subject where you do one or two experiments you’ve seen before each term, and in between spend a lot of time slowly covering ground because maths skills can’t be assumed. In the midst of this we ask them to make their subject choices – and we wonder why the uptake of Stem subjects is low?

So what’s the solution? Here are two suggestions.

We could develop a curriculum for STEM which progresses through the primary and early secondary stages, with structured teaching materials for primary level designed for use by non-science specialists. Reserve some of the more exciting experiments which best reinforce difficult concepts for secondary schools.

Additionally, we should focus on improving maths skills in primary school, perhaps even through specialist primary maths teachers. This would allow teachers at the BGE stage to get on to the “interesting” science and technology more quickly.

Otherwise, there is a real risk that we enthuse pupils about science and technology subjects at primary school, while failing to prepare them for Stem – or worse, preparing them to fail in Stem.