The buzz word in education today is “STEM”, especially in TVET circles where it appears to be critical in the development of technical minds. It has been argued that “STEM Education atempts to transform the typical teacher-centred classroom by encouraging a curriculum that is driven by problem-solving, discovery, exploratory learning, and requires students to actively engage a situation in order to find its solution” (Fioriello, 2011).

Caribbean countries need to work their way out of debt. Most Caribbean economies continue to rely on tourism. In a few countries, oil and natural gas underpin the economy. The financial services industry, which had helped to bolster some of these economies, has shrunk in recent years. Graduates with engineering degrees continue to have severe challenges in finding employment in their field within the Caribbean region. This human resource, for the most part, is wasted.

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Integration Initiatives of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) have significantly impacted on education in the Caribbean landscape. CXC, as the premier assessment and certification provider in the Caribbean, prides itself on executing its mission to provide the region with syllabuses of the highest quality, valid and reliable examinations, and certificates of international repute for students of all ages, abilities, and interests.

This paper reviews the initiative undertaken by the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, to partner with secondary schools in hosting a series of one day workshops for students preparing to sit the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations. The initiative allowed grade 12 and 13 students to participate in activities in specific STEM disciplines.

Over the last 40 years, there have been numerous changes in the Jamaican education system at both the primary and secondary levels. In 2015, there was the introduction of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) curriculum to meet the changing needs of industry. In order for policymakers to be able to evaluate the impact of this STEM-based programme, it is vital that the current landscape be surveyed to provide critical baseline data.

This study investigated Grade 9 students’ attitudes towards science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the extent to which their attitudes impacted on their academic achievement in Integrated Science. An adapted Students’ Attitudes Towards STEM instrument (Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, 2012) was piloted on 67 high school students in Jamaica and yielded a Cronbach alpha value of 0.821. It was then administered to 259 Grade 9 students from four high schools.

In Trinidad & Tobago, game-based approaches are pedagogies encouraged in the core STEM disciplines of mathematics and science. This paper presents the results of a pilot study in  which non-digital game based approaches were implemented in Grade 6 mathematics and science classrooms in Trinidad. In mathematics, reinforcement of 2D and 3D concepts in geometry took place through Gamification involving team competitions creating Tangrams and Origami. In science, student teams reinforced concepts of  conservation through the board game Extinction.