Grants & Funding: Avanti Fields
An Ogden physics education grant has helped physics to flourish at a new school.
Published: 22 March 2024
In 2021, we received a grant from the Ogden Trust to help us establish and improve physics provision. Alongside the grant, we received support and guidance from Ogden consultants Henry Hammond and Paul Cook. They worked together with us to put together a list of physics equipment that was essential to enhancing physics teaching/learning.
As a new school our resources and budgets were limited, but we really wanted to inspire our students to take physics further. We have a large cohort of Asian girls who are very underrepresented in the subject, so engaging them was especially important to us.
We also wanted to develop our newly qualified teaching staff, many of whom had limited experience in teaching physics, and would be essential in building physics capital and enthusiasm with our students.
With no physics specialist in their school, the training delivered by Henry and Paul was invaluable in building skills and confidence in the new equipment that their teachers and technicians found challenging to use. The support they provided helped to build a solid physics foundation within the science teaching and technician team.
We had our first Year 11 GCSE cohort in 2022: 23 per cent of our cohort took separate science and all 26 students achieved grade 9–5 in physics. We are a small school with only 115 Year 11 students, and we think about 10 per cent of the cohort continued with physics in further education.
Eureka!
The achievements of the Avanti science team and their students was apparent in the 2022 Eureka awards – an annual physics competition for students aged 11–16 which is part of the Institute of Physics Limit Less campaign. The annual competition received 219 entries for 2022 and when the results were announced, Year 8 student Anika from Avanti Fields came in first place with her racing track board game exploring Newton’s third law of motion.
“It was an overwhelming yet amazing experience to win the Eureka challenge. I remember how nervous and excited I felt all at once – from being able to meet with the Institute of Physics to being able to share my knowledge of physics on live tv. Overall, I am really grateful to be able to win a well-respected physics competition.”
Anika
Kalpana Patel, Head of Science
Avanti Fields
(November 2023)