Schools' Liaison Programme

The Institute is committed to the development and provision resources to complement and enhance school science. We have designed an exciting and informative programme of events for primary schools, secondary schools and regional colleges including: Teachers' Open Evenings; visits to schools to give short presentations and run experiments that complement the National Curriculum; events designed to inspire students to consider a wide range of careers in science, as well as visits to our Institute. Institute scientists and PhD students work with teachers to develop projects, give talks, demonstrate laboratory techniques and host visits to their laboratories.

We are a partner of the Cambridge Biologists network, established to enable school biology teachers to interact both with each other and other organisations offering outreach programmes. The portal provides access to teaching resources, people and wider networks to foster productive links between all members of the biological community in Cambridgeshire.

Teachers' Open Evenings allow us to hear, directly from teachers, what schools need from the Institute and ensures that what we offer is closely allied to the National Curriculum, but extending it where appropriate to bring new experiences to pupils and richer resources for the classroom. These evenings also include technology briefings for teachers on topics suggested by them (e.g. PCR, cloning).

Recent secondary school or 6th form college liaison projects include: a two-day practical project on bacterial transformation; a presentation and exercise on the theoretical and practical aspects of PCR; a seminar in which pupils use the web to carry out BLAST searches and make protein sequence comparisons; a presentation on the use of Green Fluorescent Protein as a marker in cell biology research; primary microbiology project 'how clean are your hands'; talk at Kingswood School, Corby, on Bioethics, with the Riding Lights Theatre Company. Various scientists have given lectures and discussion workshops on the ethical use of animals in research; Cells Life and DNA; Bio-enterprise and the drug discovery process, and careers in research.

‘Real Life, Real Science’ is the Foundation and Primary School Programme. Initiated in 2004, the programme was fuelled by the success of scientists' talks and practical demonstrations at three local primary schools and built on long-standing experience assisting with science lessons at Babraham Primary School. We have developed several resource packs which enable different scientists to demonstrate subjects such as ‘What is a Scientist?’, ‘Blood & Circulation ’ and ‘Digestion & Health’ to local schools.

Contacts

Dr Claire Cockcroft
(Head, External Relations)
01223 496260
Contact by email

Mike Hinton
(Schools' Liaison)
01223 496364
Contact by email