Shaping the future of STEM Education – Future Skills Curriculum

British Science Week is a fantastic way for schools to engage with and celebrate the importance of science education and STEM skilling for pupils – it provides emphasis and impetus to emerging and accessible scientific themes for schools to interpret as suits. “Change and Adapt” is the theme for 2025 and at the High School of Dundee, the chemistry department are facilitating thematic learning for S1 pupils exploring chemical changes as they iteratively experiment to adapt and perfect bath bomb prototype designs!

National science initiatives aside, every week is science week at the High School, as in addition to single subject science learning in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Computing from S1, the school has further taken the bold step of timetabling a new interdisciplinary STEM Innovation course for all pupils as part of their Future Skills Curriculum. The sole purpose of the course being to develop future skills which can encourage and prepare pupils to embrace and adapt to the exciting challenges of the future; delivering a curriculum that embeds project work whilst developing key problem-solving skills. The STEM Innovation course tasks S1 pupils with a year-long, interdisciplinary, cooperative learning project to research and develop their own Mars Missions! Pupils work in teams of 4 and assume responsibility for a new role in every section of the course; including Project Manager, Data Scientist, Chief Technical Engineer and Chief Science Editor.

The learning is organised into 4 key focus areas; The Case for Mars, Exploring Mars, Living on Mars and Mars Mission Enterprise, which they complete by recording and sharing their team’s efforts in their digital log-books. In the final term, the STEM learning joined forces with Business Enterprise to help pupils synthesise their team’s business development, human resource management and enterprise strategies as they pitch their mission ideas to potential funders. One team from each class wins the race for Mars and is challenged to successfully launch their missions!

Building upon on this fundamental new approach to STEM learning and teaching, all S2 pupils at the High School have opportunity to further develop their newly acquired STEM skills as they progress on to another cutting-edge STEM discipline fast developing in the tertiary sector – Robotics! This innovative course blends classroom, lab and off-site learning to explore the history of robotics development, robots in the media, real-world robots in action, cobots and the future of AI-enabled robotics. Pupils research, undertake creative design engineering tasks, 3D print prototypes, develop their block-based and object-oriented coding to explore exciting and emerging possibilities of the future. To enhance the in-school learning, the High School has developed invaluable partnerships with local businesses and tertiary education providers (NCR, SR Robotics and Automation, Dundee and Angus College and Abertay University) to provide enriching, real-world learning and work experience opportunities for all pupils.

The key mission of the High School’s STEM Innovation learning is to deliver a creative curriculum for ALL pupils that sparks imaginations, whilst harnessing their curiosity towards the development of future skills which prepare them for tomorrow’s workforce. Pupils learning is not summatively assessed in the traditional way, but rather formatively through multi-modal means and the range of ways in which pupils can show their understanding. They not only develop their scientific research, data handling, experimental and digital skills, but they work collaboratively to analyse, think critically, negotiate, communicate, market, present and pitch their findings to ensure their team’s ultimate success. Such assessment for learning is inclusive for ALL abilities and the course structure and timetabling ensures that the High School’s STEM education mission stretches and challenges beyond occasional initiatives and co-curricular science/robotics clubs, that are more typically embraced by boys, to embedding future STEM skilling for ALL pupils.

The feedback from parents so far has been enthusiastically supportive and staff delivering these new and novel courses admirably embraced the steep learning curve exerted by its digital delivery and the interdisciplinary learning approach which took them out of their own subject’s comfort zone towards inspirational role modelling in uncharted territory!