The boom of STEM education in China driven by the encouraging policy and school’s initiatives.

Most recently, Ministry of Education in China has issued a new national list of book recommendations for elementary, middle and high school libraries. Under the list, Chinese students were highly recommended to learn about quantum computing, drones, military equipment, artificial intelligence and even gene editing.

More than 100 pages list of 7,000 books includes subjects like science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), of which the subjects further breaks down into sub-genre such as agricultural and environmental sciences, industrial technology, transport and logistics, and aerospace. The ministry urged the education departments of all provinces, autonomous regions, tier one municipalities to implement new rules

 The list is part of a national broader goal of promoting STEM education into the school curriculum. In February 2017, the Ministry of Education in China has officially announced to add STEM education into the primary school curriculum, which is the first official government recognition of STEM education. And later, in May 2018, the launching ceremony and press conference for the 2029 Action Plan for China’s STEM Education was held in Beijing, China. The move aims to promote STEM education in China so that schools foster and equip all students with scientific thinking and the ability to innovate.

STEM education refers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, it can also break into the sub-genre including Arts, Robotic, Coding, Critical Thinking, Creative Education.  

“STEM education has received a great deal of attention in China as a key focus in training children and students in the skill sets that is really important for the next generation of skilled workers”, Chen Biao, Senior vice president at STEMedu told PingWest in a recent interview.

In response to encouraging policies by the government, schools in both public and private sectors around the country have begun to carry out STEM education programs.

“Though the concept of STEM education came from the US, Chinese government has become increasingly aware of the important of STEM education, encouraging schools to add more STEM content into the daily courses instead of extracurricular activities,” Chen Biao said.

Started in 2017, China eastern province of Zhejiang has included the information technology (programming) into the examination subjects of some college entrance examination, followed by Beijing, Shandong.

STEM education focus on “learning by doing”, it encourages students to make scientific inquiries in real situations, learning through experiment.

“The purpose of STEM education in schools is not to train “skilled craftsmen,” but to train “all-round, developed person. The core aim of STEM subjects should be making students able to think, interact with each other, not making products,” Chen Biao said.

Despite the rapid growth of STEM education in China, China’s STEM education also faces a major challenge with a shortage of both professional teachers and proper training for existing teachers.

“In order to effectively implement STEM education, full-time teachers specializing in STEM education are needed. However, at present, China lacks qualified STEM teachers and a training system is yet to be established. For instance, with regard to the certification of STEM teachers, a huge number of teachers involved in STEM subjects received no serious science education, many of them are part-time teachers whose main skill sets could be on math or Chinese,” Chen Biao said.