Girls: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I completely agree. The DfE funds the Careers & Enterprise Company, which works with 20 sector bodies and much wider. I emphasise the need for every school to take up the requirement for a qualified careers adviser to speak to every child in their school. One of the most heartbreaking experiences I have had is going to a careers fair with incredible companies there offering opportunities, and young people being absolutely astounded and saying, “We never imagined these companies would be interested in us”. There is a huge job to do in building confidence, and I believe that we are putting the steps in place to achieve that.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I very much welcome the reference by the noble Baroness, Lady Hunter, to women in engineering. I heard recently that one of the best predictors of economic growth can be seen in the ratio of engineers to lawyers. Our current ratio is a little heavily weighted to lawyers, so we need more engineers. On maths, as the Minister knows, girls get the same percentage of grades 7 to 9 as boys at GCSE, but there is half the uptake of maths A-level among girls. What specifically are the Government going to do to address that?