Seventy-Four Percent: What Actually Keeps Girls in STEM

Outreach programmes report attendance. We decided to report outcomes, including the ones that embarrassed us.

74% of EOSYN Space participants continue into a STEM education or career pathway. That figure comes from a longitudinal survey, not an exit form filled in while the bus is waiting.

**What moved the number**

Sustained contact. A one-day workshop produces a good photograph and very little else. Girls who stayed in contact with a mentor for more than six months were dramatically more likely to still be in STEM two years later.

Hands on hardware. Not simulation, not a talk — a soil sample, a sensor board, a failed solder joint they fixed themselves.

Someone who looks like them holding a job they want. This is the least surprising finding in the whole study and the one the sector is worst at supplying.

**What did not move it**

Branded merchandise. Career-day panels with no follow-up. Any programme that ended the moment the funding round did.

We are publishing the survey instrument in full so other organisations can run it, compare, and argue with us.