Ian Pearson - First Sir Gareth Roberts Science Policy Lecture

It is an honour to be asked to give this, the First Annual Roberts Lecture on science policy.

Amongst the many organisations that Sir Gareth Roberts headed, he was of course instrumental in the foundation of the Science Council and was its first President1.

We therefore all owe it in large measure to Sir Gareth that there is such an impressive and wide array of people from the science community in the audience here today.

I welcome the breadth of the membership of the Science Council. As an umbrella organisation representing organisations from a number of different scientific disciplines, you have an important role in terms of encouraging multi-disciplinary work.

In this lecture I propose to develop three themes: the need to drive up the supply of highly trained scientists and engineers, if the UK is to remain competitive in this century; the central importance of the science and society agenda; and how the scientific and research community can best help us to respond to the major challenges we face over the next decade and beyond.

I will argue that despite a great deal of excellent work to date, more needs to be done on STEM skills and to underpin that vital work we need to refresh our science and society vision for the new environment we find ourselves in.

I want to launch today a debate about what that new vision should be and how collectively we can up our game when it comes to communicating the value of science and education. I will further argue that cross-disciplinary research must become an increasing priority in the inter-connected world of the future. Lastly, I will raise the question of the implications that this cross-disciplinary approach and the blurring of traditional scientific boundaries has for the STEM agenda going forward.

Enduring Importance of the STEM agenda

As will be familiar to all of us, another of Sir Gareth's enduring legacies was the Roberts Review 2(entitled 'SET for Success') published in 2003.

It set out a series of recommendations to Government, employers and other organisations about how to maintain and develop the supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) skills into research and industry and was highly influential.

The Government backed the report. And implemented it by providing additional resources for schools, universities and research bodies - and through promoting links between schools and business.

The review led on to tangible results, including an increase in the stipend paid to PhD students, and a number of initiatives to encourage women and young people to consider a career in science.

We have seen the benefits that these important initiatives have brought. But the issues that Sir Gareth focused on remain key challenges.

As Science and Innovation Minister, they are challenges to which I attach great importance.

The global economy is becoming ever more competitive. Science and innovation are vital to increasing our competitiveness, improving our economy and our quality of life. Britain needs to generate many more highly trained scientists and researchers to meet the challenges of global competition.

This is what employers are asking for and it is necessary to build capacity now if we are to meet and anticipate the scientific and technological challenges of the future, capturing the benefits of innovation.

And it is essential if Britain is to stay in front as a leading nation in the 21st century.

Improving attainment and participation in post-16 STEM education is a key policy objective for the Government. Improving the pipeline flow of scientists and the attractiveness of science as a career must be a combined effort by Government, Higher Education Institutions, National Academies, business, and other leading stakeholders.

For the first time, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills brings together innovation policy with responsibilities for skills, higher and further education - and we are working to boost the numbers of students and graduates in STEM subjects, working closely with the Department for Children, Schools and Families and other key partners.

These traditional disciplines breed not only the researchers and engineers of the future, they provide skills to support a variety of other professions.

We want to ensure that the needs of employers are met; that the Science Curriculum is sufficiently challenging for the top 25%; that we increase scientific literacy of the population at large. And - underpinning all this - that there are good enrichment and enhancement activities as part of science education.

Measures to encourage young people to get involved in science

The Sainsbury Review 3 published last month reinforces the important point that success in ensuring that there is a well-educated and enthused supply of scientists, engineers and technicians is critical to our future economic growth.

It means doing more in encouraging our young people to take science subjects at school and beyond. Engaging their interest at all levels in the educational process.

We are clearly not starting from scratch. We have already been working hard to enthuse and inspire the scientists and engineers of the future, for example through DIUS's sponsorship of STEMNET - the Science Technology Engineering and Maths network. This was of course (under its previous name, SETNET) another organisation that Sir Gareth Roberts chaired.

One of STEMNET's key initiatives is the Science and Engineering Ambassadors Scheme ('SEAs')4 : Young professionals with science based careers who act as role models and mentors to pupils.

I hope that in the near future we will be able to welcome the 18,000th Ambassador: we are currently well on course to meeting this target. That represents over 1 million children who have been touched in some way by this scheme.

In conjunction with the Department for Children, Schools and Families, STEMNET has been working to get 250 new after school science and engineering clubs off the ground 5.

I believe these clubs will help to improve attainment in school science at all levels, and provide a solid foundation for encouraging career decisions and scientific involvement and literacy.

The Sainsbury Review challenges us to increase this figure - and I personally would like to see all schools taking advantage of this type of activity.

I also welcome the Careers from Science initiative 6 - funded by DCSF - in which I know some of you are involved. This will work in alongside STEMNET and will be complementary to other role model and enhancement activities. The project will build an awareness of the skills developed by studying science and maths, how they help keep options open, and it aims to ensure that students have the right information to hand when choosing subject combinations.

Careers from Science's aim is to attract more young people to study science for longer. And it will focus on careers from - rather than just in - STEM.

This is an important point. Some people will study science and maths but will work in non-STEM environments. That is also good for society and the economy.

Of course, supply of skills is also about raising quality and participation amongst women and ethnic minorities. UKRC, the national resource centre for women, is supported by DIUS. It works with over 70 major employers to tackle barriers to women, as well as maximise opportunities in the workplace.

We are providing £1.5 million between 2005 and 2008 for a STEM Access Grants programme run by STEMNET to engage certain Black and Ethnic Minority young people with science. We have also provided funding to the British Association to enable 'hard to reach' schools to engage more fully in National Science and Engineering Week activities. In 2007, there was been a strong take-up of these grants, with over 300 schools successful in securing them. We hope to add another 300 this year. It is clearly also important that we encourage young students to engage further in science at post-graduate level. The Research Councils are committed to enhancing the quality and output of the UK research base through training the next generation of world-class researchers. Their commitment to our agenda is vital as they support some 25 per cent of research students within the UK.

The Research Councils' Research Careers and Diversity Strategy 7 directly addresses the goals of the Science and Innovation Investment Framework.

They have also been working to improve conditions for their researchers - paying enhanced stipends to attract students to areas such as engineering, statistics and informatics, economics, veterinary science, and supporting studentships in collaboration with industry.

The science and society agenda

The drive to up the level of STEM skills in Britain is high on Government's list of priorities for science and innovation. It is positioned firmly within the broader 'science and society' agenda, which is the second theme of this lecture.

I believe we need a society that is both enthused and excited by science, one where the public understands the value of science and its applications in today's society and can feel confident about how scientists are operating. Where the public has a higher degree of scientific literacy.

The last two decades have seen dramatic change. Twenty years ago I was completing my PhD thesis on an Amstrad word-processor. It was almost state-of-the-art in those days. Mobile phones hardly existed, neither did the internet as we know it today. The technological revolution we have witnessed has transformed our lives. Over the next twenty years we will see more disruptive information and communication technologies transforming our world. However, I believe it is likely that the next 20 years will best be known as a time where we started a revolution in bio-sciences. I get a real sense that we are on the brink of huge advances in this area. But these potential advances bring a range of ethical considerations that have been largely absent in the ICT field to date and will need to be addressed by society as a whole. Developments in computing with artificial intelligence will also bring the potential for major ethical dilemmas - we have all seen the Terminator films - reinforcing the need for open public dialogue.

Scientists may have discovered it but they cannot operate in a vacuum. They are part of the society in which they and the outcomes of their research operate.

We will need to engage at an early stage with our publics and we need to recognise that there will be valid concerns and genuine ethical dilemmas in certain areas of research.

I appreciate the efforts of Sir David King in trying to build public confidence by rolling out the Universal Ethical Code for Scientists 8 - it's a first step in building that public/scientist relationship that we so truly need.

To date we have a chequered record on engagement. Difficult issues like nuclear energy and genetic modification have not been handled well. But there have also been successes - our approach to engaging the public in the development of stem cell research 9 in the UK has allowed this country to lead the world. The dialogue on nanoscience has generally been positive.10

We have all learned lessons. Public engagement is becoming recognised as a valuable part of policy-making. Indeed, one of Gordon Brown's first acts as our new Prime Minister was to encourage the use of citizens' juries.

But we are only beginning to use the new tools of the 21st century for communicating with the public, like internet phones, blogs and deliberative events alongside the traditional mainstays of printed media, consultations and surveys.

And in today's citizen-centric world, the value of a two-way process of developing and communicating our science policies with the public cannot be underestimated.

The figures tell us that the UK has a pro-science culture. In 2005 over 85% of people said they think science makes a good contribution to society, up 5% on five years before. And over 80% think that science will make our lives easier, up 10%.11

So we're starting from a very good base. DIUS - and previously the DTI - has been supporting public engagement for a number of years. We fund the Sciencewise 12 Programme to support public dialogue, for instance in nanotechnology, stem cells and internet security.

We are now building on this success to develop an Expert Resource Centre for policy-makers.

Another important development in this area will be the Beacons for Public Engagement. Launching in January 2008, Beacons will be university-based collaborative centres to help support, recognise, reward and build capacity for public engagement work.

Beacons is the biggest initiative ever launched to support public engagement throughout the HEI and research sectors. It will challenge the current culture and create strategic support, networking and capacity building for the research community.

It will be collaboratively funded to the tune of £10M over four years by the UK funding councils and the seven Research Councils, in association with the Wellcome Trust.

As well as directly working within the institutions involved in the Beacons partnerships, each Beacon will be a point of contact for others interested in taking their work to diverse audiences. Alongside the Beacons, the National Co-ordinating Centre will be a central resource to benefit the wider community.

We must also build on events like National Science and Engineering Week. Nearly 1 million people celebrated the achievements and excitement of science earlier this year. But we need to reach even more people and to give it a far higher profile in the future.

Refreshing the Vision and Strategy

Since I took over as Science and Innovation Minister in the summer, I have seen some excellent work that is taking place in Britain in the Science and Society sphere.

However, at the same time it has become very clear to me that, particularly with a new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, we have an opportunity to develop a refreshed approach in this area.

I believe that now is the right time to review this with a view to doing more to communicate the value of science and innovation. To increase scientific literacy. To increase active public engagement with the issues. To enthuse our young people as the next generation of scientists, engineers and technologists. To increase the participation of our diverse workforce. And to look critically at how we measure up against our competitors.

We've had a vision for a number of years that has brought us, successfully, to the stage we're at now.

The objectives feeding into that vision are set out in the ten year Science and Innovation Investment Framework to 2014. 13 It focuses on a public literate about science and scientists engaged with the public; the need for the science workforce to be representative of society, balanced supply and demand for STEM skills.

Strong and effective external communication of science & innovation underpin these objectives.

These objectives - as well as the overarching vision - continue to be entirely valid. But I believe we need a refreshed approach for the new environment we find ourselves in and for the new challenges we will face over the next twenty years.

We need to get across an understanding of the importance of science to our economic future and to our wellbeing in the population as a whole. We need a sharpened sense of how we - as a science and innovation community - can work better together for the benefit of the UK, both socially and economically.

To help my thinking, a month or so ago I hosted a science and society workshop with a small group of people from the science community to kickstart work to look at how to go about refreshing the Government's science and society vision.

One of my first acts as Science Minister was to commission a mapping exercise to look at work currently being carried out under the broad science and society banner. This has included the Public Sector (Government Departments and Agencies); international players; important actors such as Professional institutes, academies, charities and delivery agents; and the private sector (including companies, trade associations and support organisations). I am today putting a summary of the findings on the department's website.

Some very interesting viewpoints were expressed at the workshop, including a call for a more vibrant and exciting vision; a view that whilst public engagement had come a long way, much was still to be achieved, and that industry could do more; that public and societal engagement needs to become an integral part of the university research experience; to have realistic expectations of the media's role, for instance its ability to reflect uncertainty in science, and the need to adapt to the media's requirements for 'heroes'; better career management within science education; a continued focus on workforce diversity as an enduring and critical issue; and that there is a need for greater co-ordination between Government and groups outside Government to bring a stronger overall coherence to the overall agenda.

Today I want to take the process of refreshing our science and society strategy a stage further by launching a debate around what our vision should be and how collectively we can up our game.

What I want to do now is to enlist your help in looking at the Government's role and the focus of our activities with a view to developing a strategy that reflects the efforts of all in the community.

As a starting point, I offer my initial thoughts on a vision of what we should be trying to achieve, that is:

'A Society that is excited about science, values its importance to our economic and social well-being, feels confident in its use, and supports a representative, well-qualified scientific workforce.'

Excited, because a key challenge to all of us is to develop a society that is genuinely enthusiastic about science and has enough scientific literacy to make a difference, meeting the needs of the 21st Century. If we can achieve that, so much extra flows from it.

A society that values the importance of science to our social and economic well-being because, although there is a basic public understanding that scientific advances have benefited human-kind, the central importance of science and innovation to our future is to my mind not sufficiently appreciated.

A public that feels confident about the development of regulation and use of science, because that is critical for progress and social stability. The environment for science is changing. From education to policy-making we need to create a culture where each group is empowered to act by listening and responding to each other. In this way we can build public confidence by explaining better science, governance, regulation, risks and ethics.

Representative because we need to celebrate and encourage diversity. We have done a lot to increase the involvement of women and ethnic minority groups in both science and its governance. However, we can do more, particularly by joining forces to bring science, society and business together. And well-qualified should be stating the obvious.

I am keen that as a Department we look to innovate in the way we make policy, opening up the process to the views of the public and our stakeholders. I want the debate I am launching today to forge a new consensus around a vision and goals for the future which will lead to greater co-ordination and the alignment of strategies of all of us working in this important area.

My team at DIUS will be organising meetings in the coming months to bring together our partners from inside and outside Government. But I would also encourage you to e-mail your views and ideas via the science and society pages on the DIUS website. 14 I want to set us the target of developing a refreshed vision and strategy for action, which can be published for consultation during National Science & Engineering Week in March 2008.

Growing importance of multi-disciplinary research

My third theme is how the scientific and research community can best help the UK and the world respond to the major challenges we face over the next decade and beyond. I can be brief because I am sure the key point I want to make about the growing importance of cross-disciplinary research is well understood by members of the Science Council.

The way science and innovation is conducted is evolving rapidly. It is becoming ever more high tech and the need for multidisciplinary research is becoming ever more apparent. The challenges we face over the next decade for example, energy, climate change and an ageing population will only be solved if we use novel multidisciplinary research methods.

Nature does not recognise or differentiate between biology, physics and chemistry. Increasingly the boundaries between the disciplines are becoming blurred and many of the most interesting scientific questions are about the interfaces and linkages between traditional subject areas.

No longer do researchers sit within 'silos' focusing on their narrow field. Increasingly they are interacting with researchers from other disciplines, collaborating with them to push back the frontiers of research. I want to encourage more of this to happen.

Schemes like the Medical Research Council-run Discipline Hopping Grants 15 already do this. They allow researchers from the engineering, physical and life sciences an opportunity to work together to develop ideas, skills and collaborations. Encouraging them to develop imaginative ways of using techniques or expertise from the physical sciences to tackle biological or medical related problems.

An exciting example of this type of multidisciplinary research is systems biology. This is a whole new approach to biological research, aimed at understanding the workings of biological systems 'as a whole' rather than solely the components such as DNA and proteins. This approach combines theory, computer modelling and experiments to studying important biological challenges, such as ageing.

Over the next years the Research Councils will be taking forward cross-council research programmes relating to six of the key challenges facing us today, including energy; living with environmental change; global security; ageing; nanoscience; and the digital economy.

The programmes will bring together scientists from a wide range of disciplines and will involve organisations from across Government and business.

I welcome the development of this type of approach. As a Government, we shall continue to support excellent research across all disciplines and encourage multi-disciplinary projects that bring together researchers from many different backgrounds to tackle important research areas.

Given the breadth of disciplines covered by the Science Council's membership, I welcome the fact that many of you are already working closely together. We will only in my view respond best to the challenges facing us in the 21st century if we work together.

As a final thought I want to pose the question of what this change in the way that research is being conducted means for our work on the STEM agenda and for the future training of our scientists and engineers, and for the teaching in our schools. It is quite possible the answer is that we are already fully taking into account the rapid changes we are seeing in this area in our policies and programmes, but I will want to be assured of this over the next few months. I would welcome your views.

Conclusion

Mr President, I will conclude by stressing again my appreciation for some of the excellent work that has been taken forward, notably on STEM and the science and society agenda over the past few years. Progress has been made across the board, and the late Sir Gareth Roberts had a hugely important hand in much of these efforts.

As I have argued, however, there is no room for complacency. I believe we need a refreshed science and society vision and strategy if we are to best respond to the new environment we find ourselves in.

In launching a debate today, I want to open up the Government's policy making process to the wider scientific community. I am looking forward to working with many of you in the coming months. I'm sure Gareth would approve.

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