An evaluation of gender bias and pupils’ attitude towards STEM disciplines in the transition between compulsory and voluntary schooling

Tackling the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) skills shortage is an ongoing challenge for governments and policymakers worldwide. While the last decade has seen an increase in student enrolment into STEM degree courses in the UK, the gender gap remains a persistent issue in academia. In order to understand the causes underpinning female under-representation in STEM, it is essential to consider the whole academic pipeline and identify its “leaky points”. As the transition between compulsory and voluntary schooling represents a critical attrition point in the STEM educational pipeline, we conducted a survey to investigate the attitude of a cohort of year 11 and year 12 pupils towards STEM disciplines. Our results indicate that a gender bias is already evident at General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level, where only 25% of girls expressed the intention to pursue a career in STEM. In both age groups, girls expressed a considerably lower preference for chemistry, physics and ICT, and a higher preference for biology compared to boys in the same year group. Participation in extracurricular activities and parents’ educational status both showed a strong correlation with pupils’ intention to undertake STEM studies in higher education and pursue a career in a related field. A recurring theme emerging from the survey is that pupils are eager to gain more knowledge about “real life” applications of science and are inspired by interactions with visiting scientists. These results corroborate the notion that outreach activities have a crucial role in promoting engagement in STEM subjects amongst young learners, and are essential towards the endeavour of “mending the pipeline” at an early stage

Gender balance and impact of role models in secondary science education

Exposure to inspirational and relatable role models is crucial towards fostering engagement of learners with scientific disciplines. However, the representation of scientists in popular culture is still far from being adequately gender- and race-inclusive. This study evaluated the gender balance and impact of scientific role models using a two-pronged experimental approach. The gender balance was investigated in search engines, online databases, and school curricula. A survey was used to investigate English secondary students’ awareness of role models and intentions to pursue further scientific studies.Our findings revealed a widespread female underrepresentation amongst scientific role models in all the analysed online sources and in high school curricula provided by the three main English exam boards. The survey (n = 356) revealed that students were considerably more likely to identify famous male than female scientists. While awareness of female role models was significantly associated with students’ gender, this was not the case for male role models. A statistically significant correlation was also observed between the number of identified role models and intentions to pursue scientific studies in Key Stage 4 girls.This study reinforces the urgency of ensuring school curricula and online resources provide a more modern and inclusive representation of scientists