Students feel STEM subjects too tough, say educationists

 

Many juniors feel discouraged when they see their seniors struggling with STEM subjects, says Mak Chee Kin.

PETALING JAYA: The declining interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in school is due to the perception that they are too difficult, two education experts said.

Melaka Action Group for Parents in Education (Magpie) chairman Mak Chee Kin said many juniors in the school where he teaches felt discouraged when they saw their seniors struggling with STEM subjects.

He said the school was supposed to have a 60-40 ratio of arts to science stream students for Form 6, but this ratio seemed to be widening every year.

“The Form 6 college in which I sit as the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) chairman has only 36 science stream students (out of 453).

“That’s not even 10%, which is alarming” he said, adding that there were only two science stream classes for Form 6, compared with 12 social science classes.

However, Mak said, he could not link the declining interest to school closures during the Covid-19 lockdown period in 2020 and 2021, saying the problem was already evident by then.

Based on statistics for 2021 released by the education ministry, there is a huge gap in numbers between students pursuing humanities and those pursuing STEM subjects.

In 2019, a total of 42,257 students were enrolled in Upper Form 6 humanities classes, compared with 4,877 in the science stream. The number of science students dropped in 2020 to 3,853.

Mak said the students’ perception of and inability to handle the subjects were due to teaching methods and standards.

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“We do have good teachers, but many are not up to the mark,” he said.

He said teachers needed to find new and creative ways to teach these subjects to revitalise interest.

Last week, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim called on the education ministry to set up a panel to tackle the waning interest in STEM subjects.

Anwar said that despite the world moving towards green technology, especially in the automotive field, children were showing less interest in such subjects.

National Union of the Teaching Profession secretary-general Fouzi Singon said student perception was that STEM subjects were tough. He said they became discouraged when they ended up failing their exams.

He believed the problem lay with the method of teaching. Saying students often got bored with learning theories, he urged teachers to find ways to make classes more interesting and engaging.

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Fouzi said it was important for teachers to be more engaging at primary level as this was where the interest would be killed due to pupils becoming bored or being unable to follow the lessons. - FMT