We’re supporting Imperial College London as they break down barriers to practical science, giving young people the space, tools, and support to discover a passion for STEM.
Science is best learnt alongside real experiments and practical sessions. But for many young people, that opportunity is gradually decreasing.
Recent data from the Royal Society shows that the number of GCSE students doing hands-on science work at least once a fortnight has reduced from 44% in 2016 to just 26% in 2023.
Combined with widespread school staffing shortages, many classrooms just don’t have the resources or capacity to run big experiments.
This issue is even greater for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are 44% less likely to pursue STEM subjects after secondary school than their classmates.
This is a challenge that Imperial is working to solve. Their Wohl Reach Out Lab sessions bring KS3 students into Imperial’s state of the art laboratories for workshops in physics, chemistry, maths, biology and engineering.
The goal is to build confidence, spark an interest in STEM and support schools in raising student attainment.
We’ve awarded Imperial College £74,000 in funding over three years to help make these workshops possible for more young people across London.
We recently visited the lab ourselves to see the programme in action. While we’d just missed the rat dissection, we arrived in time for the afternoon bath bomb making session – which smelt a lot nicer by all accounts!
The session was a great example of how important practical learning is in science. After an intro to the chemistry behind the ingredients and some equation balancing, the students had to experiment to find the perfect formula.
They used their existing knowledge to test different ratios until they reached the right consistency, recording their results so that the recipe could be repeated.
This activity was good as we don’t get this opportunity in school and there were adults to help us with our experiments
KS3 pupil
Lillian Baylis School
Something that really stood out was the amount of support in the room. In a normal school class, it’s likely to be one teacher managing 30 pupils.
In these sessions, they have around 4 experts per class made up of university mentors and PHD students. This not only gives the pupils extra support, but the opportunity to ask more questions and talk to real scientists.
One of the PHD students told us how engaged the kids get when they’re given the time to really explore a project. For example, they mentioned a two-day forensic session that the students loved, where they used blood samples to solve a crime scene mystery.
The team also tailors these scenarios to different age groups. For example, while other students solve a more complex mystery, younger groups might investigate a stolen teddy bear.
In one class, the teacher even brought in their own dog as a surprise guest after the students successfully solved the case of the missing dog.
The teacher we spoke to thought the programme was great because the school can work directly with Imperial to pick workshops that match what their classes are learning at the time. This could be extracting DNA or dissecting a specimen, which their own school doesn’t have the capacity to provide.
Additionally, while school practicals are usually limited to one or two hours, the Wohl Reach Out Lab allows students to spend a whole day or sometimes two to really get stuck into it.
By removing the barriers to practical learning, these sessions are showing young people that the world of science isn’t closed off and is somewhere they can enjoy and thrive.
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