Big tick winner

NPL Management Ltd - Bringing Science to Life Programme

Merrill Lynch Award for Education supported by the Department for Children, Schools and Families

The National Physical Laboratory’s (NPL's) Bringing Science to Life Programme was set up to help reverse a widely reported decline in the number of students choosing to study science or pursue scientific careers, enable cross-organisation staff engagement and communication, and develop the communication skills of their staff.

Processes

The Programme also aims to inspire children, students, teachers and parents to become interested in the science, which underpins civilization using scientific knowledge held by NPL’s staff, conveyed in an appropriate fashion assisted by communication skills training and a set of specially developed resources.

NPL commits £400,000 (just under 1 per cent of its annual turnover) to the campaign each year. This funds 300 staff days, associated travel costs, materials to aid presentations and a number of freely available resources, such as the Science Poster series. NPL mails over 2,000 packs of 10 posters free of charge to schools/colleges.

The Programme’s main target is to support teachers of science, which it achieves through a number of activities including Physics Teachers’ Days at NPL, provision of two six-week ‘Protons for Breakfast’ evening courses (typically attracting 70 students a session), laboratory tours and scientific challenges. NPL aspires to provide a professional Science Ambassador programme that spans company activities and develops relevant demonstration materials and talks.

Staff can become involved at different levels, from giving one-off talks at careers events, to co-coordinating major events such as our annual Water Rocket Challenge – an annual schools and open competition aimed at making science fun and encouraging an interest in science and engineering and creative thinking. The outreach campaign is promoted to all new NPL recruits, at an annual evening event, to enlist volunteers as Science Ambassadors. Currently 45 members of staff are involved in the campaign.

Impact

The NPL-promoted Virtual Physical Laboratory physics-simulation software is now estimated to be in use in one third of secondary schools in the UK.
NPL gets an average of 2,500 new visitors to the Bringing Science to Life area of its website each month, driving new traffic to the NPL site as a whole and gaining a wider understanding of its work and role.
Annually, NPL’s outreach activities communicate with over 4,000 children, parents and teachers, many through classroom-based science activities.
NPL’s evening courses have a reported 95 per cent retention rate. The course numbers have increased from 35 on the first to 86 at the most recent.
In 2006 NPL was nominated as an exemplar company by the Women in Work Foundation for providing positive role models for women in science and engineering.