International

The importance of science and technology is widely recognized for economic prosperity, social advancement and sustainable development. In this respect, science education has been a major priority to ensure that sufficient numbers of students go on to pursue careers in science, technology and engineering (STEM) (EC, 2015). However, despite all the efforts to popularize science over the last decades, school systems fail to attract enough students. Only 15 per cent aspire to follow science-related careers, while the profile of those who do go on to study STEM subjects and pursue STEM careers is too narrow: women, working-class and some minority ethnic groups remain under-represented (Archer et al, 2015).

The publication and policy recommendations were prepared in the context of the international project 'Teamwork, Training and Technology Network (TTTNet), with partners from Italy, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Spain and Norway.

Encouraging Student Interest in Science and Technology Studies examines overall trends in higher education enrolments and the evolution of S&T compared with other disciplines. The results suggest that although absolute numbers of S&T students have been rising as access to higher levels of education expands in OECD economies, the relative share of S&T students among the overall student population has been falling, The report shows that encouraging interest in S&T studies requires action to tackle a host of issues inside and outside the education system, ranging from teacher training and curriculum design to improving the image of S&T careers. Numerous examples of national initiatives are used to complement the analyses to derive a set of practical recommendations.

Manufacturing: comparisons of manufacturing in the UK and other major economies since 1970 using UN data. This note uses UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data to compare manufacturing in different countries. The most recent data from this source are for 2014.