The European Commission has recently unveiled its STEM Education Strategic Plan, aimed at enhancing STEM education across Member States to secure critical skills for innovation and competitiveness. In this blog post, ANE shares its positive takeaways from the plan, as well as some concerns and recommendations for further improvement.
Positive Aspects
Importance of STEM Education
The EU’s commitment to STEM competencies is a positive move to secure a supply of critical skills needed for innovation and competitiveness. This focus gives a push to Member States to implement necessary reforms and investments in education and skills development.
Quantitative Targets
ANE commends the strategic plan for setting specific quantitative targets to evaluate progress in STEM education. For instance, it stipulates that the share of students enrolled in STEM fields at the tertiary level should reach at least 32% by 2030. These targets create measurable benchmarks for Member States to aim for developing national targets and national STEM strategies.
European Skills Intelligence Observatory
ANE is particularly pleased with the proposal to establish a European Skills Intelligence Observatory, which we have long recommended. This observatory is crucial for enhancing skills intelligence across the EU and anticipating future labour market needs. By utilising insights from the observatory, the EU can better understand trends in skills shortages and adapt educational programmes to address gaps in critical sectors, enabling a more agile educational response to economic needs.
Gender Diversity
Furthermore, the strategic plan emphasises increasing women’s participation in STEM fields, recognising the importance of gender diversity for innovation and economic growth. The goal to train one million girls by 2028 will not only help close the gender gap in STEM but also enrich the talent pool.
Areas of Concern
Supply-Driven Approach
The plan appears to be supply-driven rather than demand-driven. By focusing heavily on increasing the supply of STEM graduates and training programmes without adequately engaging with industry demands and integrating skills intelligence, the plan risks creating a disconnect between education outputs and the actual skills employers require. This approach may limit the effectiveness of STEM initiatives in addressing labour market challenges.
Ambition in Policy Goals
Although education and skills development are mainly national competencies, addressing STEM skills shortages requires broader and cross-sector policy initiatives. It is, therefore, regrettable that this strategy is limited to being a STEM strategic education plan, without a broader cross-sectoral focus. This brings a risk of doing business as usual, resulting in only soft coordination mechanisms.
Missing link with Labour Policy
The EU Commission’s goal to anchor STEM as a strategic pillar in education and skills policy is insufficiently ambitious. While the Commission recognises the importance of integrating STEM competencies into various aspects of education policy, it fails to comprehensively link education with the job market, not least when tackling shortages and job-to-job transition of the STEM workforce. While the Skills Portability Initiative is a positive step forward, it falls short by concentrating solely on the recognition of skills and qualifications across Member States. This doesn’t ensure portability of skills gained at jobs, and the seamless integration of informal, non-formal and formal learning.
Brain Drain Prevention
ANE is also concerned about the lack of strategies to prevent brain drain among STEM professionals. Understanding the mobility patterns of these professionals and the factors motivating their decisions is necessary for Europe to develop cohesive talent circulation policies. The absence of comparable data complicates the design of initiatives aimed at retaining valuable STEM talent.
Capitalising on existing initiatives
The myriad of existing EU initiatives, such as the Pact for Skills and European University Alliances, aiming to address skills shortages, have not been evaluated in terms of what added value they provided for companies and what was the hiring rate or workforce percentage securing a job. In addition to this, these initiatives have important flaws in how they are funded, often being project-based and lacking sustainable business models.
Shaping the Future of STEM Talent
ANE is ready to contribute to the implementation of the STEM Education Plan, by having a seat at the European STEM Executive Panel and by continuing voicing our recommendations:
The European Council shall elevate STEM competencies on the political agenda
To prevent implementation bottlenecks caused by varying approaches and paces among Member States, we recommend elevating discussions on STEM competencies to the highest political level as a cross-cutting theme. This means including STEM competencies in the agenda of Heads of State meetings, not only during the European Semester but especially when discussing strategic autonomy, security, and competitiveness.
Member States need to implement necessary reforms and investments in skills development.
More concretely, Member States must develop national STEM strategies and implement the recommendations from the European Semester.
The European Parliament must keep the EU Commission accountable
Members of the European Parliament should keep the European Commission accountable for measuring progress in STEM competitiveness and overall improvement of STEM skills anticipation. The newly established Intergroup on Education and Skills for a Competitive Europe has a particular role to play in measuring the progress.
The European Commission must measure the progress
The European Commission shall strive for a comprehensive real-time data collection to ensure a better alignment of STEM competencies to the labour market and industries’ demands. Moreover, the EU Commission shall benchmark the implementation process by Member States in adopting the STEM Education Strategic Plan.
Read the full STEM Education Strategic Plan here