In Millburn Academy, we offer a variety of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects for pupils to take from S3 to Advanced Higher. In Technology and Engineering, the percentages of girls and non-binary pupils in STEM is 21% and 3% respectively. As a department, we want to improve this by breaking the stigma and encouraging more girls into our subjects.
We are very proud of our female Alumni that are now in STEM. We asked them various questions about their current careers, why girls should consider STEM and advice for their teenaged selves.
To understand why there are less girls in Technology and Engineering at school, we have teamed up with some prefects and are getting involved in subject choices after Christmas to speak directly to pupils about their feelings towards STEM subjects. This will allow us to develop our subjects and curriculum accordingly, to make a more inclusive environment.
Breazeal is a pioneer of social robotics and human-robot interaction. She is the founder of the tech company, Jibo, which created one of the first ‘family-robots’ and she is also an associate professor at MIT.
We have reached out to inspirational female role models that have been suggested by pupils to ask their opinion on why our female and non-binary pupils should consider a path in STEM.
International Women's Day is a day to celebrate women and their achievements. The first IWD was celebrated in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. More than a million people rallied on the first International Women's Day for equality for women in areas such as voting, holding public office and work.
After some decades of little activity, in 2001 a new platform was launched with the purpose of reorganising IWD. Now, IWD is celebrates the achievements women have made since it started in 1911. The organisation also work with charities worldwide to help women find their place in the world.
As part of their work during the second Lockdown, S1 and S2 were tasked with designing posters. Their posters had to be on a female in STEM and they were to try and include a question they would ask them if they could.
We had so many fantastic posters handed in that we decided to showcase some of them here - take a look!