The Ogden Trust Schools Science Partnerships

In 2005 The Ogden Trust launched its first Schools Science Partnership between Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, Wakefield Girls’ High School, Carleton High School, Pontefract and The King’s School, Pontefract in conjunction with New College, Pontefract and Leeds University.  This has provided a forum for the schools to collaborate to provide activities for their pupils across all year groups and abilities and to share ideas between staff in an atmosphere of friendly co-operation.
 
The main focus of these partnerships is:
  1. joint science activities with pupils from both the state and independent schools, and the university
  2. science outreach projects with feeder primary schools
  3. Ogden sponsored Science Teaching Fellows (PhD students) who spend one day per week in state secondary schools helping to deliver science, with the aim of converting them into school teachers
  4. exchange of good practice between teachers in different schools and particularly across the state and independent sectors
  5. to find candidates for Ogden student science scholarships at sixth form (in the independent sector) and at university level
The second of these partnerships was launched in 2006 between the Bury Grammar Schools (Boys and Girls) and four state schools in Bury (The Derby High School, Woodhey High School, Castlebrook High School and Holy Cross Sixth Form College), supported by the University of Manchester Faculty of Science and Engineering.  Both the Bury Schools Science Partnership and the Wakefield/Pontefract Schools Science Partnership have been successful in securing major grants from the ISSP Fund (Independent and State Schools Partnership Fund).
 
Because of the effectiveness of these partnerships in linking groups of schools to host the various science enhancement programmes with which the Trust is involved, further groupings are now being explored and discussed as follows:
 
(i) Preston schools/University of Central Lancashire
(ii) Coventry schools/University of Warwick
(iii) Liverpool schools/University of Liverpool
(iv) Oxford schools/University of Oxford
(v) Bristol schools/University of Bristol     
(vi) Birmingham schools/University of Birmingham/Aston
(vii) Bolton schools/University of Salford
(viii) Nottingham Schools/Universities of Nottingham
 
Sir Peter Ogden attended the official launch of the Bury Schools Science Partnership on 8 and 9 March 2007 when he was able to visit some of the schools involved as the activities were taking place.