This initiative has been developed by young scientists at the MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in order to support teachers in nurturing their pupils’ interest in science.

Our overall aim is to contribute to the creation of a generation of young people comfortable with science as an integral part of everyday life and open to considering a career in science.

Over the next few months, we hope to add to our menu of what’s on offer. We have begun building an easy-to-use database of careers in science, where pupils can see the variety of jobs on offer and find out what subjects these careers require them to study at school.

We hope to provide resources for teachers, such as stained slides and high quality scientific images, and offer the opportunity for teachers to visit our facilities at the Queen's Medical Research Institute.

To ensure that our ideas match what teachers (and pupils) really need, we would welcome feedback from teachers to guide our progress and plans. Please email us your feedback and suggestions.
 

Experiments to try in school
RSSI has created seven experiments which can safely and easily be carried out in schools. Each activity is described in terms of its relevance to everyday life, and is linked to the Scottish 5 – 14 Environmental Studies curriculum guidelines. We hope these activities will help teachers make science classes more interactive for pupils and relevant to the real world.

A protocol sheet for each activity is available to download from the panel on the right, either as a printer-friendly html page or a PDF. Please note these protocols are thought to be suitable for S1/S2 pupils but all schools should conduct the necessary risk assessments before performing the experiments.

Career visits by young scientists – pilot project for Edinburgh schools only
We are currently running a pilot project in Edinburgh secondary schools offering science teachers the opportunity to have young scientists come to their school for half a day to talk directly to pupils about career paths in science. We hope that these visits will aid pupils in making their subject choices at schools as a misinformed choice now can have long term consequences that they may have to live with for the rest of their career.

This scheme is currently available only to schools in Edinburgh, although we hope to launch this throughout central Scotland in the future.  If you would like to register interest for this or other activities please click here.

Register
If you would like to receive email notification as each new activity is launched, please register here.