KUALA LUMPUR: The education ministry aims to expand access to the learning of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to all students with a new approach to go directly to interior schools including those accessible only by boat and dirt roads.
“We want to bring STEM to them, to work with schools to organise experiential activities and opportunities to expose them to the potential of STEM,” Education Minister Maszlee Malik said when launching the STEM4ALL campaign in collaboration with Microsoft Malaysia today.
He said the move would “open up worlds of possibilities to students who might not have the same opportunities as you and I”.
“I see a future where every classroom is enabled with assistive reading technologies so that blind students can dream the same as their friends, and every classroom has speech devices so that our mute students will be able to have a voice.”
He said his ministry would be launching a new STEM teacher competency framework for training a future generation of STEM teachers.
He cited data from professional networking site LinkedIn, showing four out of five of the top emerging jobs in Malaysia are STEM-related.
However, he is worried supply will not be able to meet the growing demand.
“For example, demand for data scientists in Malaysia grew 15 times between 2013 to 2017. In 2017, only 44% of Malaysian students were in the STEM area compared with 48% in 2013. This represents an average reduction of around 6,000 students per year.”
Maszlee said another worry is the quality of STEM graduates.
“More than half of them do not have the minimum grades needed for advanced STEM degrees, especially students from rural schools.”
He said much work needed to be done to inspire students to be part of the future of a digital and technology-driven country. - FMT
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