Written Evidence submitted by The Francis Crick Institute (DIV0029)

Introduction

The Francis Crick Institute is dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease. Our state-of-the-art building in central London brings together 1,500 scientists, students and support staff working across disciplines, making it the biggest biomedical research facility under a single roof in Europe.

At the Crick we believe we have an important and useful role to play in the education of young people. Outreach has been a feature of institutes and universities for a long time but in setting up a new institute, the Crick sought to develop a long-term, holistic offer to improve attitudes towards, and knowledge and skills in science.

Science education and engagement across STEM subjects is not what it could be and as part of the Committee’s inquiry into Diversity in STEM, we wanted to share some of the work that we are doing in this area to illustrate what can be achieved with active outreach and a concerted effort to reach a diverse and inclusive range of young people as an integrated part of their education.

The Education Programme at the Francis Crick Institute – a novel approach to informal science education; how are we different and what have we achieved?

Engagement is everyone’s responsibility.

The Crick opened in 2016, and unusually for a research institute has “To engage and inspire the public” as one of its five strategic priorities.  The inclusion of this aim along with recruitment of a team of engagement professionals, dedicated spaces for visitors, and training and recognition for staff who volunteer their time, has created an environment where engagement is high profile and viewed positively and enthusiastically by staff (94% of respondents in the annual Crick staff survey feel that it is important to engage the public).

The Crick’s team of five education outreach staff specifically aim to grow and diversify the community of young people studying and aspiring to work in science and STEM. We want young people to feel that science and the Crick are interesting, important and relevant to them. To do this, we use ideas from elsewhere that work well and develop new activities in response to our audiences’ needs. A particular goal is our aim to engage ‘every child, every year’ of their school lives, something we don’t think has been done before.

Focussed, local engagement has a range of important benefits.

Our education programme predominantly targets state schools in the London borough of Camden. This defined cohort has meant that our programme is very efficient.  With a relatively small team, we are able to offer a range of activities to all of those classes (currently in excess of 20k young people with >16k children actually taking part in Crick activities in the academic year prior to the pandemic). Our local focus also allows us to harness the power of being in the neighbourhood, which has advantages including recognition and ease of access. It means that families are aware of the Crick beyond its education programme and messages that we give to the children can be reinforced through parental engagement.

High-quality, easy-to-access activities that are useful to schools are vital

Our engagement model is predicated on being able to repeatedly engage with young people throughout their school lives. Teachers are the gate-keepers to their classes, and so to ensure that we have continued access we have made a big effort to ensure that our offer is genuinely useful and desirable to them. This has required compromises, but by continually checking in that our offer links to the changing curriculum, provides activity beyond what would normally be possible in the classroom, and is accessible and technically and logistically easy to engage with, we have achieved a virtually 100% retention rate of schools taking part.

Engagement that starts early and is sustained helps prevent stereotypes associated with science from becoming established.

Our programme starts working with children when they are five and continues until they are 16 or 18, depending on what subjects they take at sixth-form. Through us, by the time children in Camden schools leave Year 1, over 90% of them have put on a lab coat and done an experiment with a scientist, and by the end of Year 5, they will have spent at least one day at the Crick doing investigations in a lab. The nature of the Crick’s workforce means that the children are more often than not being engaged by a female scientist, and teachers comment that this has really helped their pupils overcome their misconceptions about who scientists are.

A holistic approach that takes the learner’s current situation and development into account is needed. 

The needs of young people vary greatly throughout their lives and this is reflected in our programme where we have a wide range of age-appropriate activities. These include: practical science workshops, competitions, science shows, in-class investigations, work-related learning and transferable skills activities, work-experience, mentoring, help with job applications. However, we recognize that even with our best efforts, the time we spend with Camden’s young people will be only a small part of their lives, and to achieve the change we seek, we also need to engage other key influencers.

If you do one thing – support the teachers.

Teachers in particular are vital for helping children develop positive attitudes and secure skills in science. The Crick runs networks that allow the teachers who lead science in school to come together to take part in training, share experiences and feel supported both emotionally and practically.

We recognize that primary school class teachers are almost always non-specialists who often lack confidence and abilities in teaching practical science, and we seek to help bridge that gap by providing hands-on training and encouragement.

In contrast, secondary school science teachers are usually specialists but they often suffer from lack of equipment or knowledge of how to relate their subject to future jobs – again something that we are ideally placed to solve through donations, loans, training and other development opportunities.

We believe that science and the Crick are for everyone.

Whilst locally focussed, it is important to us that all young people in the area have the opportunity to benefit from the Crick. To make this happen it’s important to acknowledge that this can be much harder for some than others, and an equitable approach is required.

Reaching the harder to reach through persistence

Informal science education often reaches children who either are already interested in science and so they seek it out, or who have engaged teachers who provide opportunities for them. We saw this in the development of the Crick, with some early-adopter schools being very enthusiastic often associated with them already being quite ‘sciencey’. Others repeatedly declined our offer, with many of these clearly having much less focus on this area of the curriculum, and arguably, the children attending these schools had the most to gain from engaging with us. Since opening we have been clear that whatever we offer is available to all state schools in the borough and by using variety of methods, from recruiting school governors to advocate for us, to sending personal invitations to teachers, we are now regularly working with all bar one of Camden’s 60+ state education facilities.

Levelling the playing field for work-experience

It is clear that access to STEM engagement opportunities beyond the classroom is often down to the school one attends or factors relating to the family, e.g. socio-economic status or parental professions. One place where this is most evident is with work-experience as the supply of placements is limited and family or school connections often matter. In an attempt to address this, we operate a reciprocal programme in which Crick staff who arrange placements for their friends or family are obliged to offer a matched placement for a local young person who typically won’t have the network to access such placements elsewhere. Whilst not a totally novel approach, it has been hugely successful in giving students from less advantaged backgrounds the opportunity to work at the Crick. Data from our 2018/19 year show that two thirds of the Crick’s placement students are from Camden state schools, with us being particularly successful in recruiting students from ethnic minorities and those with parents who don’t have degree level qualifications. 

Beyond mainstream

Within Camden we have a hospital school, a CAMHS unit, a unit for children with autism, two pupil referral units, a school for deaf children, and a school for children with very complex needs. By working closely with their staff to adapt or create bespoke activities, being mindful of good practice in accessibility, we work to ensure that children in these alternative provisions have appropriate access to Crick resources, including visits to the Crick.

Sharing our learnings

Our local approach means that we can help to make a tangible difference to young people’s appreciation and understanding of science. Although our programme specifically serves young people in Camden, we think that that are key areas of our programme that would translate well for young people across the country. We are open to sharing our blueprint, knowledge and ideas to support endeavours across the country.

Please note: We are happy to host a visit for Committee members who would like to find out more about our approach to education programme and see it in action in our on site classroom.

January 2022