Girls in STEM have brighter future
MANZINI - As government envisages to mainstream gender and energy into secondary school curriculum, it has been revealed that graduates in the STEM field get employed within six months.
Over and above this, government said Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects (STEM) careers would be in more demand in Eswatini in the next three to five years.
This was revealed by the Director of Education Testing Guidance and Psychological Services Unit (ETGPS), Lindiwe Dlamini during a sensitisation workshop for Guidance and Counselling Life Skills Education on mainstreaming gender and energy into the curriculum. The workshop was held at The George Hotel yesterday. The director said it was a rare privilege for the Ministry of Education and Training and ETGPS unit to be part of this work which was destined to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged in terms of access to energy.
Address
One of its main aims is also to address issues of gender and energy through the curriculum.
She said as a panel of the Guidance and Counselling Life Skills Education subject, they should be cognisant of the fact that theirs was to ensure that their Life Skills Education materials were such that they produced learners who would be equipped with good decision making skills.
She said this should include their potentials, even in careers that had all along been male dominated.
The director added that the country’s National Education Sector Policy of 2018 acknowledged that girls and women were under-represented in the areas of STEM and as such, underlines the need to ensure that inclusive opportunities were available for the studying of STEM and future vocational and academic specialisations in one or more of these subjects, including the energy sector.
She said a better vehicle they had at their disposal to influence and steer girls and young women, was the school curriculum.
Dlamini said this project was funded by the World Bank and it came at the most opportune time for the country, because, as a panel, they were in the process of revising their Life Skills Education syllabus.
“If the key findings of the recent Skills Audit Report of 2022 are anything to go by, graduates in the STEM field have higher chances of being absorbed by industry and are usually employed within six months.
“Again, STEM careers are to be in more demand in Eswatini in the next three to five years and this is information that we ought to take and use to steer our learners, especially the girl child, who is the main focus of this project, towards such subjects,” the director said. She said the importance for girls to get a feel of the real work environment in STEM oriented industries as one way of rekindling their interest in the field, could not be over emphasised.
Meanwhile, Thembinkosi Ndzimandze, the Acting Energy Director in the Ministry of Natural Resources, said in October 2022 the ministry in collaboration with the National Curriculum Centre (NCC) and the Department of Gender and Family Issues (DGFI) through funding from the World Bank held a capacity building session, which was followed by an audit of the primary school text books as a first step towards the integration of gender and energy issues in the primary level curriculum.
Importance
He spoke of the importance in changing the social norms, beliefs and stereotypes that limited participation of women and girls and thus closing the gender gap in the energy sector.
Ndzimandze said this marked a transition in terms of gender and energy issues integration in the education system as it would enable pupils to exploit available opportunities as they progress to higher levels of education. He then highlighted that the objective of the workshop was to raise awareness on gender and energy issues for integration into the life skills education programme at secondary level.