Dr Manasvi M. Kamat
The women and racial minorities in India are disproportionally underrepresented in the STEM-based private sector’ noted the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) Task Force Report on ‘Emergence of STEM Education in India’ released last week by Member of the NITI Aayog, VK Saraswat in the presence of members of the task force.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Education is an idea of curriculum-based learning through components that have an interdisciplinary and applied approach. STEM education assumes importance as it impacts all employment types, careers and society at large. The report emphasises that every individual is able to develop understanding of STEM to fully engage with it.
The task force was formed under the chairmanship of Prof. K.K. Aggarwal, Former VC, Indraprastha University in collaboration with several other professors across the country to examine the issues relating to STEM education in India. This report identifies the main issues involved in STEM education; provides guidance on how the industry can contribute to it and proposes a new framework for such education from formal, non-formal and informal approaches.
India produces the highest number of scientists and engineers and also has the highest number of students studying STEM compared to all other faculties put together. This proves a natural inclination of Indians for such subjects.
Various reports in India have noted that 75 percent of India’s technical graduates aren’t qualified for jobs in the very high-tech global industries.
Given the above propositions, it must be realised that the missing element is of the approach of education that develops the faculty of critical thinking, and in creative application of concepts taught across STEM subjects.
STEM education also becomes more imperative as we move into the future. The National Science Foundation reports that 80 percent of the jobs created in the next decade will require some sort of STEM skills. We are now at a stage where the number of STEM jobs in the world is growing at a fast pace, currently outstripping the number of available STEM graduates. It has been projected that between 2010 and 2020 there will be a great surge in STEM related jobs both in industry and business.
For instance, the Bio-medical engineering jobs are projected to grow by 62 percent, medical scientists by 36 percent, system software developers by 32 percent, computer system analysts by 22 percent, mathematics by 16% and all occupations, including STEM, by 14%.
Realising the importance of STEM in fulfilling our present and more acutely the job requirements in the future; there is a need to strongly revisit the methods, processes, tools and pedagogies of imparting such education. Research shows that children develop interest in STEM fields at an average age of eight. There is a need to catch up and further nurture this interest from a young age.
The Government of India has become sensitive to this need and the urgent occupational demands which prompted it to fund something called ‘Atal Innovation Mission’ in setting up STEM Labs with more engaging learning assets and management tools, and assessment systems at schools.
Accordingly the NITI Aayog proposed to build 5441 ‘Atal Tinkering Labs’ (ATL) to build an environment of scientific temperament, innovation and productivity amongst the students. This initiative rightly recognises that schools are the best to provide autonomous STEM learning to students and convert them into agile minds to cultivate curiosity, creativity, and imagination in young India. The report offer several important recommendations and among others, the need to start integrated B.Tech programmes to provide for India’s growing small-scale industrial sector.
The report writers have rightly identified the need to bring scientific temper to translate Indian society’s strength of ‘Jugad culture’ into ‘Culture of innovation’.
For young people aspiring careers in STEM, the report identifies the need to bring emerging technologies and markets closer to the classroom, 10 and also to fire the imagination of young children through innovative learning.
The above report goes one step ahead to call for a focus on ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ in STEM education. The report has pointed that STEM education to be more public friendly as private institutions are far behind in enrolling SC, ST OBC’s and Special Category students in comparison to public universities.
Other recommendations of the report include planning national-level specialised institutions in areas where the impact is expected to be the highest and for the long term, for example, artificial intelligence, cyber security, climate change, event-driven business ecosystem and internet of things and for setting up of institutions for popularisation of STEM in one year.
In a very positive step last year, the NITI Aayog had partnered with SAP to promote STEM in secondary schools of India as it is expected that India’s growth for next few decades will depend on innovations coming out of these tinkering labs and calls for an effective public-private partnership. It is in this context that the report lays down the 21st-century vision on how best to equip Indian youth with the necessary skills through STEM education and foster the country’s long-term economic development. It is hoped that this VIF’s Report will attract the attention of the concerned to initiate implementable and scalable initiatives for the betterment of ‘all-inclusive’ STEM education in India.
