Public Engagement:
A NEW primary school activity

The current primary school programme involves delivering resources to students in the classroom. To increase the interaction of students with scientists and to enable them to visit a research institute we piloted two events for pupils from primary schools in Hackney during the 2009/2010 academic year. These were organised with the Learning Trust, the education authority for Hackney. In total 89 year 6 pupils from six different primary schools with no or very little prior STEM engagement visited the Babraham Institute.

The half-day event includes presentations about DNA and muscle delivered by Babraham scientists, a practical which involves extracting DNA from onions, and a lamb’s heart examination. Pupils also hav the opportunity to ask scientists about their research careers and any other science-related questions. Both events were very successful and a member of the Learning Trust related to us after the first event, “I just wanted to say a huge thank you to you and your team for an amazing, stimulating a fun filled morning at the Institute. All the schools had a fantastic time. I have had one of the teachers in particular feedback that all the children went back buzzing, talking about and enthused by science...this is exactly the type of activity that children need to keep their minds inquisitive and I will be feeding back to all schools in my cluster. ”This was the first time we had delivered a primary school event on-site and teachers commented on the value this added to the student’s experience.

One of the PhD students from the Babraham Institute who helped with the second Hackney event contacted us afterwards to say, “The reactions and enthusiasm the kids showed was simply brilliant - really rewarding to be part of the day and visit".

One of the children today seemed particularly amazed when I stated that I had lived for some of my childhood in Hackney and then actually did my degree in London, moving back to Hackney".

"The pupil thought that science was only done in big, well known universities such as Cambridge and Oxford. His face completely changed when he realised that he could become a scientist, even living and coming from Hackney...so I would certainly love to help out more often and give something back to the area which has had such an influence on me.”
Since then this PhD student has been involved in several different events for local school students which we have organised.

We are using these events as a model for other activities on-site aimed at primary school aged pupils, for instance, we organised a ‘science evening’ at the institute for a local Brownie group in 2010. This enabled them to complete their science badge and involved experiments such as onion DNA extraction and chromatography using felt-tip pens. We also repeated the Hackney event at the start of 2011 for pupils from a primary school in North Cambridge (Orchard Park) which has had little STEM engagement. Pupils comments after the event included: ”doing the experiment was amazing”, “I liked seeing how big the cow’s heart”, “I didn’t know anything about muscles but now I do” and “When I grow up I want to be a scientist.”

We are grateful to Eppendorf UK who support our Primary and Secondary science outreach programmes with ideas, consumables and resources. We are working together to develop and deliver NEW resources to reflect these ideas as well as the science of the Babraham Institute.