Widening Participation

Increasing students’ confidence with I’m a Scientist

“Many of our students lack confidence in their academic ability so they were buzzing when they realised they can hold their own in a conversation with intelligent, educated people and this helped them realise they are all scientists too!” – Julia Anderson, FE College Biology Lecturer

This general further education college is split across 3 sites in a large, post-industrial, non-university town. Students at the college took part in the I’m a Scientist Immune System and Genes Zones in March 2018. Julia tells us how meaningful engagement with the scientists increased her students’ confidence. Continue reading →

Posted on May 14, 2018 by admin in Evaluation, News, School, Teachers, Widening Participation | Tagged Case Study | Comments Off

Using I’m a Scientist to increase participation in higher education

“Traditionally, not many of our students go on to university. I’m a Scientist helps by allowing students to relate to scientists and helping them see the value of studying at a higher level.”

– Mark McNally, Science Teacher

A mixed 2-19 academy, where over two thirds of the school population are students from disadvantaged backgrounds, took part in I’m a Scientist in March 2018. Mark tells us how the activity helped interest his students in science careers and consider higher education.

Continue reading →

Posted on May 2, 2018 by admin in Evaluation, News, Science Capital, Teachers, Widening Participation | Tagged Case Study | Comments Off

Providing STEM opportunities for distant schools

“As we are a remote rural community we do not have a huge variety of careers on our doorstep but these events help to bring them closer to pupils. More students should be getting these funded opportunities across the UK.”

– Emily Tulloch, Science teacher on the island of Unst.

The most northerly school in the UK is located in one of our most distant areas in the Shetland Isles. Emily tells us how I’m a Scientist allowed her remote students to explore a range of STEM careers and increased motivation to learn science. Continue reading →

Posted on April 6, 2018 by admin in Evaluation, News, Science Capital, Teachers, Widening Participation | Tagged Case Study | Comments Off

Broadening horizons for students in a deprived area

“It was a really easy project to engage with for both children and teachers; it only took me about 30 minutes to prepare for all 3 lessons. I was pleasantly surprised with just how excited students were to get responses from serious adults about their work and the adults’ interests.” – Vicky Heslop, Year 6 teacher

A junior school that meets our widening participation criteria took part in the Climate Zone of I’m a Scientist for the first time in March 2018 with their three Year 6 classes. The activity broadened student aspirations, improved enquiry skills and challenged their perceptions of scientists.

Continue reading →

Posted on March 27, 2018 by admin in Evaluation, Teachers, Widening Participation | Tagged Case Study | Comments Off

Widening Participation School case study

In our experience, the longer it takes for a scientist or engineer to reach a school, the less likely those students are to have visits. We’ve done some research that suggests schools more than 30 minutes travel time are less likely to receive visits.

We also think looking at Widening Participation schools is useful to understand the variety of schools we have wanting to take part. Continue reading →

Posted on December 15, 2017 by admin in News, Widening Participation | Tagged Case Study | Comments Off

School engagement in STEM enrichment: Effect of school location

In recent years funders of public engagement and outreach activities have made a priority of reaching underserved audiences.

Wherever we looked we found anecdotal evidence that while, as a sector we were becoming increasingly effective at reaching schools in deprived parts of our metropolitan areas, rural communities continued to miss out.

But anecdotal data only gets you so far. We wanted to find out just how much the more remote schools were missing out. We also wanted to know what constitutes a remote school in this context. Continue reading →

Posted on November 30, 2017 by modjosh in Evaluation, News, Widening Participation | Comments Off

How do students from different schools engage with IAS?

Thousands of school students meet scientists through I’m a Scientist every year, and they ask thousands of questions. In June 2017, over 3,000 students took part, asking scientists more than 2,500 questions in the ASK section alone. This is also the event that we implemented our question coding system across all the zones to see what students are asking about. This all got us thinking: Do students from different types of schools ask more or less of certain question types? We’ve identified two groups we want to look at: Under-served: Schools more than 30 minutes travel time from a major research HEI Widening Participation: Schools with an above average number of students eligible for free school meals Taking the questions from the I’m a Scientist zones in June 2017 it appears that: Overall, the split of questions is similar across all groups of students Under-served students ask more “science topics” … Continue reading →

Posted on September 14, 2017 by in Evaluation, News, Widening Participation | Comments Off

Travel Time

Last summer we wrote a post about using distance as a measure for identifying widening participation schools.Since then, we have completed our map (pictured) of schools in the UK which lie farther than 25 miles from a major research institution. In July we mentioned that travel time, in place of as-the-crow-flies distance may be a better measure of accessibility. We want to look at schools far from HEIs as these schools are more difficult for scientists and researchers to reach; a PhD student is much more likely to travel 20 minutes to a school to give a workshop, than take out an entire day to visit a school an hour away. While distance does provide a reasonable measure for accessibility, it does miss out some of the nuance in more rural or coastal areas. Our measure could be improved. We got in touch with iGeolise, who specialise in travel time data, … Continue reading →

Posted on February 23, 2017 by modjosh in Widening Participation | Comments Off

An update on widening participation

In September last year we wrote about Widening Participation. We’ve refined our criteria a little since then; below is our definition of a widening participation school.

We’ve decided on these criteria because they match, in broad terms, the kinds of criteria universities use to identify widening participation students.

A widening participation school is…

In England and Wales

A school in an area where POLAR3 is in the first quintile, or…
A school where the % of students eligible for free school meals is higher than 41%, or…
A school where the % of students achieving 5 grades A*–C at KS4 is below 45%, or…
A school where the % of students level 4 in reading, writing, and maths at KS2 is below 45%, or…
A school more than 25 miles from their nearest HEI.

Continue reading →

Posted on July 15, 2016 by modjosh in News, Project News, School, Science Education, Widening Participation | Comments Off

Reaching widening participation schools. Does it work?

Fair access has been at the heart of what we do at I’m a Scientist. One of our long term goals is to increase the number of widening participation schools taking part in our projects. To do this, the first question we asked ourselves was: What is a widening participation school? But now we have yet another question: is it worth it? Our instinct tell us it is, but is there any evidence that bringing STEM activities to those hard to reach students improves their attitudes to science or the likelihood to enrol in a STEM career? We’ve looked for this evidence and we’ve found a very nice piece of research carried out by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT, by its Spanish acronym) with the help of 1,565 Y10 and Y11 students from 36 schools in Barcelona and Madrid. The students came from different socioeconomic sectors: 12% were … Continue reading →

Posted on February 24, 2016 by modangela in News, Widening Participation | Comments Off

Widening Participation

One of our long term goals is to increase the number of Widening Participation schools taking part in our projects, but to do this, there’s a fairly fundamental question to ask first: What is a widening participation school? Without establishing what would count as a widening participation school, it’s difficult to target these schools, and even more difficult to evaluate how well we’re doing in increasing the number taking part. Time then, to set out some criteria. A Widening Participation School is… A school where the % of students achieving grades A*–C at GCSE is below 45%, or… A school where the % of students eligible for free school meals is higher than 41%, or… A school in an area where POLAR3 is in the first quintile, or… An SEN School Independent schools will not be counted. In 2013, a school with more than 41.6% of students eligible for free school meals would put … Continue reading →

Posted on September 4, 2015 by modjosh in School, Widening Participation | Comments Off

Widening Participation – Where we started (Feb 2014)

Using data from the Department for Education we have looked to see how the state schools signed up for I’m a Scientist have compared to all state schools across England (data is not as easily available for Wales, Scotland and NI). We have used 4 measures. Polar, IDACI, GCSE 5+, and FSM. More information here. We have 552 english state secondaries with correct postcodes signed up on our list. That is our sample for this data. Anecdotally you hear that schools in the most deprived areas struggle to take part in enrichment and outreach activities like I’m a Scientist. The data we’ve analysed suggests that those schools are less likely to sign up but it is not as extreme as we expected. That’s the good news. Schools from across the spectrum are interested in taking part in I’m a Scientist, but those that actually turn up are much … Continue reading →

Posted on February 20, 2014 by in News, Widening Participation | Comments Off

What can you do?

I want to take part with my class ❯

I want to take part as a scientist ❯

I want to find out about funding I’m a Scientist ❯

What is I’m a Scientist?

I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here is an online activity where school students get to meet and interact with scientists.

It’s a competition between scientists, where the students are the judges.

Students challenge the scientists over intense, fast-paced, online live Chats. Then they Ask the scientists all the questions they want to, and Vote for their favourite scientist to win a prize of £500 to communicate their work with the public.