STEM Subjects

Part of Private Members’ Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 4:15 pm on 27 April 2009.

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Photo of David Hilditch David Hilditch DUP 4:15, 27 April 2009

I, too, welcome the opportunity to highlight this matter in the House and to support the motion. I thank the Minister for Employment and Learning for his participation. As Mr McClarty and Mrs Long said, there are others in that supply chain.

If we are to build our economy, we must build it on information technology and engineering. That is why we must address the decline in the number of students who study STEM subjects and the gap that exists between available skills and the total volume of required skills. At Queen’s University in 2000, there was an all-time peak of 120 students studying electrical, electronic and software engineering. In 2008, there were only 36 students on those courses. Other research and statistics project a deep and worrying developing situation.

Employers have good reason to be concerned that there will not be sufficient skills to provide the next generation of scientists and engineers. Our reputation in Northern Ireland for a world-class workforce at the top of the league is in danger of being characterised by becoming mid-table dwellers.

There is an annual requirement in the STEM sector for about 1,350 recruits across all occupational areas just to replace the people who will retire in the next six years. In 2007, 2,500 people were recruited into the entire engineering industry alone, within which there were 535 hard-to-fill vacancies. That is estimated to have cost our economy £21 million in gross value added.

We are trying to encourage investment, and we need to start concentrating on the availability of the workforce that will be required if foreign companies set up here and the need for a training system that will continue to deliver the number of skilled people that are needed for that sector. I therefore urge the Minister and his Department to work with the Committee for Employment and Learning, the Executive and other Ministers who are not here today to build relationships with the universities and colleges, to introduce incentives for students to study the STEM subjects, and to increase the number of apprenticeship opportunities in that sector.

It is imperative that the Minister bring forward robust proposals to ensure delivery in line with commitments in the Programme for Government and to safeguard a future workforce that is fit for purpose. I support the motion.