The science-based Cogent sector is also fundamental to the UK becoming a highly skilled and highly productive economy – the driving force behind the Leitch Review of Skills. Our employers’ success is of course underpinned by innovation and improvement, which in turn depends on high-level STEM skills.

The STEM industries, including those in the Cogent sector, offer exciting and rewarding careers and a variety of opportunities across a range of disciplines. However we do know, through a range of evidence and for a mixture of reasons, that more and more young people are choosing not to progress learning in STEM subjects at both school and in Higher Education.  

All of us involved in this agenda from employers to educational establishments and government are working to find out why this is happening and to put solutions in place. Equally importantly we are demonstrating that the study of STEM and the careers that it offers are exciting, rewarding and offer fantastic career progression.

Indeed these are truly twenty-first century jobs.  But to get into them, young people need both the knowledge and skills required by the sector. This is where we need to work hard to ensure that schools and HE and FE have the rich, up-to-date and relevant curriculum and resources to deliver this learning to an increasingly discerning population.

This special issue of the Cogent eBulletin updates you on our work, and also some of the tremendous efforts of our partners and stakeholders to drive progress.

It is important to understand the “whys”, which we and others are doing through research: but solutions are firmly on the STEM agenda. We encourage our employers to join in any way they can – through the new Diplomas, work experience or links with education. There is a lot to be done and we are working at the highest levels of government, with funders and with education to drive this work forward.

Joanna Woolf
CEO

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