Pan European Networks, a journal on EU policy on science, technology, education and defence governance, featured an editorial on the EU STEM Coalition in the September issue of 'Science and Technology'. The editorial focuses on thhe challenges in promoting STEM accross Europe, and the EU STEM Coalition's support of the Commission's intention to launch an upscaled EU STE(A)M Coalition. 

Teachers should obscure from students that they are doing Stem work because young people are put off if it is framed in this way, leading politicians have been told.

Stem is the commonly used acronym for science, technology, engineering and maths, but expert witnesses advised today against referring to Stem when dealing with students – instead, they should use terms such as “creativity”, “ideas” and “problem-solving”.

Clare Adamson, convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, said today that some educators had told her a few weeks ago that they “only do Stem by stealth”, because “if they presented young people with a problem or a project, they got stuck in – until they labelled it [as Stem]”.

The Scottish government has been urged to tackle inequality following a parliamentary report into science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) education. The publication, made available today from the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, which has been investigating Stem in early education, said more needed to be done to reduce the effects of gender and financial inequality on the standard of learning across the country. The committee's convener, SNP MSP Clare Adamson, has called on the Scottish government “to do more” to study how effective measures to promote Stem in schools have been.

The competitiveness of industry in Europe is dependent on the effective use of new technologies and the knowledge, skills, competences and creativity of its workforce. Shortages, gaps and mismatches in high-tech skills negatively affect innovation, productivity growth, job creation and social cohesion. Estimates of the number of jobs that will be lost to automation over the next decades have been alerting policy makers and the public. Although the numbers differ by author and scenario, there is a broad consensus that many of the tasks carried out by workers today are likely to be automated in the not too distant future. As jobs change in their task content at an accelerating pace, and as new jobs emerge, policy makers must help industry and workers to keep pace with fast-changing skills requirements. This calls also for large-scale multi-stakeholder partnerships and re- and upskilling initiatives, as well as a clear view of the way lifelong learning should be funded, managed and incentivised to become a reality for all.

In their report on Education on the digital era: challenges, opportunities and lessons for EU policy design (2018), the European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education indicated that it “supports the increased funding available for digital skills across the next generation of Multiannual Financial Framework programmes”. However, it also “insists on the need to deliver synergies across programmes to maximise the effectiveness of funding for digital skills development and deliver lasting results”. The Committee also stresses the importance of setting up education and training programmes between industry and training providers that are more cooperative and give greater importance to re-skilling and up-skilling efforts. It calls for a “shift towards more on-the-job learning and insists on the need to have the right education and training frameworks in place, and to ensure that vocational education systems are properly resourced; believes that opportunities for re-skilling and up-skilling are essential, with relevant digital skills components mainstreamed in workplace training programmes”.

Please note that the Katapult-programme (public-private partnerships in VET and higher education) of the Dutch national STEM Platfom was referenced as a best practice. 

Leaders of some of Europe’s largest employers have today called for an EU competition policy which would allow European businesses to compete successfully at scale in today’s globalised and fast-moving economy. Measures would include adopting a more dynamic approach to competition enforcement and taking a more holistic view to safeguard global competitiveness. These reforms would enable competition policy to operate under the demands of the modern, digital and often borderless economy. The paper sets out four key policy recommendations to ensure that EU competition policy remains fit for purpose in the modern digitised and global markets:

1. Align competition enforcement with the demands of the modern digitised economy: a more dynamic and pragmatic approach, which in particular takes into account non-price factors such as the role of data, innovation, quality, and choice, and the potential consumer benefits of inter-company relationships.
2. Implement a smarter, leaner merger control regime: a broader and forward-looking substantive assessment, simplifying and shortening the merger control procedure, including by reducing the burden of information requests, improving checks and balances within the Directorate-General for Competition and implementing effective judicial review.
3. Increase legal certainty for competitive collaboration: providing a more welcoming environment for pro-competitive business activities, ensuring a harmonised approach between the Commission and National Competition Authorities, and better guidance for firms, for example in the form of ‘comfort letters’.
4. Adopt a holistic viewpoint to safeguard global competitiveness: the Commission must adopt a more comprehensive view of market practices and market power held by foreign state-owned or state-supported companies operating in Europe, and introduce more flexibility in state aid rules to enable research, especially in key strategic areas.