Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor has presented an inaugural STEM award to Year 10 Crookwell High School student Laura O’Keefe.

Mr Taylor congratulated Laura on being nominated for excelling in a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Maths) related discipline. The award was presented at the school presentation evening this week.

Mr Taylor said: “Congratulations to Laura, who is a worthy winner. I am very proud to be introducing this inaugural STEM award, a perpetual award, into a number of schools in Hume. I myself was a keen maths student at school and went on to have a great business career based on applied mathematics and economics. STEM subjects are where the jobs of the future are – that’s why we’re so strongly focused on them.”

Angus Taylor Video Clip >>

Transcript: “At the moment, we’re struggling to find enough teachers for Maths for instance, we’re struggling to find enough people with Science and Maths backgrounds to get involved in the technology sector and many other sectors that really need those skills. Even in sectors like agriculture now, more and more of what producers are doing is software enabled, it’s using quite complicated hardware. Same with cars. They almost have computer systems inside the car, so if you want to look after a car, if you’re a mechanic, you have to be across that.

“These skills are becoming more and more important in very practical ways and that’s why I want to encourage our students and our teachers in these areas to be excited about what they’re doing and to recognise the enormous potential of STEM.”