Working with Schools – Techniquest
By Gemma Gibson
Techniquest is a Cardiff based educational charity which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Andrea Meyrick, who hosted the masterclass and is head of Projects at the organisation, and the rest of the Techniquest team aim to engage people with science offering a wide range of services and activities to schools and teachers. Angela addressed some of the key issues and questions surrounding public engagement and working with young people, such as ‘why bother?’. Well, the reasons are abundantly clear: it can develop their confidence, give them transferable skills and improve their CVs, enrich their curriculum and help to open up more opportunities beyond compulsory education, such as further education or practical training for prospective careers. Examples of some useful engagement projects would be: giving talks to students on your subject/field of work, organising after school clubs, mentoring disadvantaged pupils or even providing professional development training for teachers. It is important to remember that in order to make public engagement projects successful and worthwhile some practical knowledge is essential. For example it is important to learn school specific jargon (GNVQ, Key Stages 1, 2 and 3) and the curriculum of the students you would be working with. You should also be aware that it can be somewhat problematic for school administration with regards to covering lessons, funding, insurances and risk assessments, to organise and collaborate with you for an engagement project with pupils. Solutions to some of these issues are based around making it as easy as possible for the school to work in partnership with you for such a project; for example try to fit your project in with what is currently being studied, make it possible to carry out the project in the school as leaving school grounds can pose many administrative difficulties, and try to build a relationship with the school itself as this will make it easier to approach them with your ideas. Finally, the ‘Golden Rules’ which should be followed when organising an engagement project with schools are:
· RELEVANCE – it must be subject and curriculum specific
· APPROPRIATENESS – you need to use age appropriate language and teaching methods
· WOW FACTOR – experiments and projects should be exciting and attention grabbing.
Engaging with school pupils is about providing opportunities and aspirations; the world is, in fact, their oyster and they can and should achieve to the best of their ability.
