We can’t afford to let students drift away from STEM
Australia needs great science teachers, a stronger STEM pipeline and a better-connected research system to secure its future prosperity.
Roughly a decade ago, a team of researchers based at Swinburne University recorded a series of oral histories with veterans of the CSIRO. The interviewees were formerly research scientists, policy advisers, division chiefs and CEOs who had contributed to Australia’s national science agency over several decades.
Although the Swinburne team interviewed people with very different careers and backgrounds, they found all shared one thing in common: a debt of gratitude to a primary or secondary school teacher whose science classes had changed the course of their lives.
Science and technology has always been foundational to Australia’s national prosperity, security and economic resilience. But the outcomes of scientific inquiry — from AI models to advanced manufacturing and innovations in energy and resources — have never been so pivotal to our place in the world as they are today.
That makes the work of Australian scientists, public science agencies, and teachers in science, engineering, technology, and maths (STEM) fields, more important than ever before.
