The overall objective of the STEM School Label project is to guide European schools in increasing young Europeans’ interest and skills in maths, science, engineering and technology education and careers and to provide the schools with the necessary tools in order to engage their students, teachers and other actors, in STEM related activities by developing an appropriate STEM school strategy. Providing adequate guidance and underpinning innovative activities to be developed at the school level, the STEM school label will build a network of STEM schools involving STEM Teachers, guidance counsellors and head of schools. The project will also contribute to give a recognition (and provide an ecosystem for development) at the European level to the schools engaged in innovative STEM education activities and allow them to be part of a community of STEM schools spread out all over Europe. The STEM School Label is a joint initative of EUN Partnership, and several organisations specialised in STEM education. The STEM School Label proposal will develop complementary blocks of activity: 1) Developing a transnational set of criteria in order to define STEM schools as it is essential to scale them and evaluate successful models at a European level. 2) Guiding schools and its stakeholders in improving their level of STEM education activities in the classroom but also favour connections and links with STEM stakeholders outside the school 3) Compiling existing innovative STEM education resources useful for schools in order to improve their level of STEM activities. 4) Developing a transnational network and community of STEM schools in order to allow peer to peer learning activities The STEM School Label project will address (1) the school education challenges and (2) the role of industry in STEM education (with the active support of the STEM Alliance, which is a public private initiative created by European Schoolnet which brings together Industries, Ministries of Education and education stakeholders to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths education and careers to young European's and address anticipated future skills gaps within the European Union. (http://www.stemalliance.eu/). The STEM school Label will propose an ecosystem based on a self-assessment tool which will enable to appraise the current activities of the schools in the area on STEM education (including assessing skills and competences of students). The ecosystem will identify the areas of improvement for the school based on the results of the self-assessment, make available to schools improvement pathways and offer the school access to resources, exchanges, communities, courses, for improving in the areas where shortages have been identified. The proposal will therefore contribute to the acquisition of STEM knowledge and to 21st century skills and competences as well as contribute to the transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications via the self-assessment tool which can be used by any school in Europe.
The overall objective of the STEM School Label project was to guide European schools in increasing young Europeans’ interest and skills in mathematics, science, engineering and technology (STEM) education and careers and to provide the schools with the necessary tools in order to engage their students, teachers and other actors, in related activities. In line with this objective, the STEM School Label project developed a framework where schools can evaluate their performance in STEM via an online self-assessment tool, according to the set of criteria defining a STEM School. This self-assessment tool helps schools identify required areas of development and provides suggestions of resources for applicant schools to improve their STEM activities at school level. Since the launch of the STEM School Label platform (www.stemschoollabel.eu) and by the 28th of August 2020, 1,912 schools joined the STEM School Label, which means that the STEM School Label already reached over 229,440 students. 552 schools received the Competent Label and 9 reached the Proficient Label. From primary to upper secondary, the STEM School Label reaches diverse levels of schools and audiences including teachers of STEM and other subjects, school managers, teacher trainers, students and parents throughout Europe and beyond. STEM School Label has undoubtedly made a significant impact on schools, the development of their STEM strategy and consequently their students, throughout Europe, for example, by providing them with a framework organized around 21 criteria and by allowing schools to share their practices via Case Studies and School Practice Evidence. The STEM School Label is a joint initiative of EUN Partnership, and several organisations specialised in STEM education. The consortium developed complementary blocks of activity: 1) Developing a transnational set of criteria in order to define STEM schools as it is essential to scale them and evaluate successful models at a European level. This was done with the European STEM Schools report (O1) available under https://www.stemschoollabel.eu/criteria, which presents the results of an analysis developed to establish and validate the definition of a STEM school. Following this report, the consortium also developed a reference framework for schools to complete in order to be labelled as a STEM School (O2). In this report we explain the development of the reference framework which constitutes the basis of the self-assessment tool, as well as provide the actual initial reference framework. 2) Guiding schools and its stakeholders in improving their level of STEM education activities in the classroom but also favor connections and links with STEM stakeholders outside the school. In this regard, the consortium developed a Progressive Pathways Guide to obtaining the STEM School Labels (O3), where we explain the processes to be followed by the applicant schools in order to apply for the STEM School Labels and how they can improve their level of activities. This objective was also achieved by developing the self-assessment tool (O5) which identifies areas that require development and provides training and resources (via the Ecosystem of resources- O4) for its participating schools, with the aim of improving their activities in STEM. The content of these deliverables is available on the different pages of the platform. 3) Compiling existing innovative STEM education resources useful for schools in order to improve their level of STEM activities. This was done by developing the Ecosystem of resource (O4) which constitutes of a compilation of links to existing resources at transnational level but also at the national level for some questions (France, Lithuania, Portugal and Serbia) which allow directing each school to resources in different languages (in English, in French, Serbian, Lithuanian, and Portuguese). These resources support professional development opportunities in the areas covered by the self-assessment tool and constitute the Action plan automatically sent to schools once they carry out the self-evaluation. 4) Developing a transnational network and community of STEM schools in order to allow peer to peer learning activities. This was done with the development of the platform (O5) which allows a number of opportunities to exchange among schools (forum, galleries of School Practice Evidence and Case studies) and the development of the capacity building programme (O7) that was developed for Ambassador STEM Schools, which are selected schools that are the starting point of a learning community and learning partnerships on STEM schools. The best practices from this community of STEM schools and findings from the project are highlighted in the STEM School Label report on Best practices (O8), available under this page: https://www.stemschoollabel.eu/news/detail?articleId=276118