The Primary Science Quality Mark is an award for primary schools who have prioritised the development of science in their school. Fen Drayton has gained the silver level of this award!
We have been working on the award criteria for the past year. It has involved developing a vision and values for our science education, in particular, ensuring that children enjoy and are inspired by science lessons in school. We have improved the range and quality of our lessons by doing practical work as often as possible, doing experiments which sometimes work and sometimes don't, so that we can talk about what happened, using computers and i-pads to support our understanding and working outside for some lessons. One of the strengths of the school's provision has been the involvement of real scientists in our lessons: we had a scientist from a local technology company running a science club for Y6; visits by scientific researchers to lead lessons; loan boxes from Cambridge University and trips to science museums. The judges said, "You have really embraced the value and importance of enriching your provision for science and have organised an impressive programme of visits, visitors and activities for your pupils. The strength of this application lies with the number and range of enrichment activities that have taken place, particularly with the number of real life scientists that have visited the school."
Our award is valid for the next three years, but we are not going to stop developing our science provision. We will continue to build on the work of the last year and develop our links with the scientific community around us so that we can inspire the next generation of scientists in our school. I hope that in three years' time, we will be able to announce that we have reached gold level as well!