To ask the Minister of Education for his assessment of the ‘World Around Us’ component of the Key Stage 2 curriculum, including its effectiveness in specifically encouraging students to pursue science subjects.

The Department asked the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) to conduct a review of the implementation of the ‘World Around Us’ Area of Learning in 2013/14. The purpose of this review was to find out how primary schools are implementing and developing this Area of Learning. ETI's report found that most of the science and technology lessons observed by inspectors (86%) were evaluated as good or better. Over half of the lessons were evaluated as very good or outstanding. The report makes a number of recommendations and I have asked my officials to consider how these can be taken forward.

Additionally, the Department has a number of STEM intervention programmes and initiatives to complement the curriculum and together, I believe these are having a positive impact in terms of pupils pursuing science subjects. There has been an upward trend in the number of A-level STEM examination entries since 2007/08 rising from 38.2% to 41.2% in 2012/13.