Secondary school needs in remote experimentation and instrumentation

The education in applied sciences, engineering, and technologies is one of the Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2006/962/EC) and priority areas in the educational strategy in EU countries. It directly effects the industrial development. Recent surveys show that the occupational structure of EU employment of the engineering sector tends to shift towards knowledge- and skills-intensive jobs from 27.3%(2007) to 32.4%(2020) (CEDEFOP, Skills supply and demand in Europe. Medium-term forecast up to 2020 (2010)). Therefore, contemporary industry demands well-educated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) graduates. Since students' motivation to learn depends upon the knowledge and skills of the teachers, teachers should have access to high quality and real-life-based resources to build their competence, to support student's improvement, to familiarize with up-to-date research, development and industrial needs in STEM. This paper presents the study results on secondary school needs in development of remote experimentation and ICT competences in several EU countries. The survey was executed in frame of the project “OLAREX: Open learning approach with remote experiments” supported by EU Lifelong Learning Programme.