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At-Bristol

Supplementary Education theme

£37,748 for 21 months

At-Bristol received funding for the Bright Sparks project, which works to build the confidence of supplementary school leaders supporting the science curriculum by developing creative teaching approaches and inspiring Key Stage 2 and 3 students to consider careers in  science.

Supplementary school leaders and students were consulted in order to establish their needs and barriers to learning about science. Leaders were offered one-to-one mentoring with At-Bristol staff and continuing professional development sessions. Activity days were organised to put the approaches learned into practice with 122 students. The project linked into the Aiming Higher black and minority ethnic (BME) initiative at the University of the West of England, which provided inspiring BME science role models.

Measuring impact: The uptake of GCSE science increased from 42 per cent to 78 per cent of the students participating in Bright Sparks. All 22 participating teachers reported that they had learned a variety of creative teaching methods which were transferable to other subjects. When asked what was crucial to the project's impact, leaders named the creative approaches, the interactive methodology and the inspirational role models.