What do ultimate frisbee, running a marathon in less than two hours and America’s Cup have in common? It might sound like the first round of Only Connect but the answer, in this context at least, is that they’re all topics that bring science to life and link theory to real-world activities.

This is something that Phil Avery, director of education at Bohunt Trust - a multi-academy trust formed of eight schools across the South West of England - says can be overlooked in science lessons.

“There’s an awful lot of content in science and what can sometimes get missed is how that content is applied,” he says. “We spend a lot of time thinking about what we’re teaching, which is the curriculum, and how we’re teaching it, which is the pedagogy, but we forget about the motivation.”

Of course, motivation is not something teachers can magic out of thin air, especially when they are focused on delivering the curriculum and achieving good assessment outcomes.

Stem lessons: the importance of engagement 

This is why, a few years ago, Bohunt turned to 1851 Trust - a charity formed by Sir Ben Ainslie in 2014 - and its Stem Crew initiative for help in this endeavour. The charity has a range of resources linking key science concepts to engaging activities: looking at nutrition and air resistance when it comes to trying to run a sub-two-hour marathon, for example, or the best materials for building a high-speed racing yacht. 

Joseph Wellerd, education manager at the Trust, says the aim is for “teachers to bend and shape [the resources] however they want in their lessons,” rather than operating as a checklist approach that removes room for creativity.

“We know teachers have different ways of working so we try to create resources that fit into their approach - that might mean a single lesson, a double lesson or five lessons in a row,” he adds.

“Trying to open it up to different schools and how they use [the resources] is, I think, one of the most important things.”

Alongside the lesson plans, the Trust also makes use of connections with the sporting world to give schools access to high-profile individuals and scientists. For example, when pupils at Bohunt School Horsham looked at the sub-two-hour marathon project - officially dubbed the INEOS 1:59 Challenge - they were able to interview sports scientist Robby Ketchell who works for the INEOS Grenadiers cycling team. As a result, students understood how the science concepts they were studying were linked to the world challenges the team was facing. 

Georgette Ayling, headteacher at Bohunt School Horsham, says this time with Ketchell was a real eye-opener for pupils.

“The combination of practical, hands-on and creative activities with meeting real-world scientists gave the students a taste of how exciting and fulfilling a life of science can be,” she says. “He challenged the commonly held perception of scientists in white coats in laboratories and gave them an idea of how you can make a career out of a passion.”

Students also tested some of the real-world ideas from the 1:59 challenge, including the “flying-V formation” runners use, to understand the improved aerodynamics it delivered and how this then impacted areas like nutrition and endurance.

Taking this cross-curricular approach helps pupils start to see connections on a far deeper level between subjects - far deeper than the standard curriculum would provide, says Avery. 

“What we are doing with these resources is engaging in learning and thinking and oracy that is far higher than you will see in an actual science paper where, say at GCSE, your highest mark question is six marks,” he says. “It’s about the rigour of all this, the complexity, the real-world impact, the human element…there’s a lot more going on [with what pupils are studying].” 

The connections to the workplace are clearer too: Avery highlights research that shows that students with a higher amount of science capital are more likely to continue on into science, technology, engineering and maths subjects and into Stem careers. 

“What [these studies] also show is that disadvantaged students are less likely to have science capital and so that wider understanding of how science can be applied in a variety of different careers, is so important,” he adds. 

It’s not just unusual sports that can be used in this way too. During the Euro 2020 tournament, the 1851 Trust worked with the FA to provide resources for key stage 1 and key stage 2 learners, and there are plans afoot for a project linked to the Women’s England team next year. 

For Ayling, working on these projects has also proved a great way to re-energise pupils’ sense of fun around education after the various lockdowns. 

“This immersion into real-world application of education is always important but never more than while students across the country were learning remotely in isolation,” she adds.

Sparking an interest in Stem subjects 

This is all positive and upbeat, but does it have a meaningful impact on motivation and further engagement in Stem subjects?

Avery says that since starting working with the trust there has been a clear uptick in interest in Stem subjects among the 3,000 or so pupils that have been taught via the resources and lesson ideas.

“Maths is the biggest subject in our sixth forms now, with the sciences just behind that and in terms of [students attending university], we are seeing strong uptake too,” he adds.

He says, though, there is still room for improvement and that a key part of its ongoing work is to ensure there is a diversity of students who take these subjects on to further study.

“It’s better than it was but it’s still not good enough and we are constantly keeping our eye on this to make sure we are not ending up focusing only on one particular profile of student.”

Overall, though, Avery and Wellerd both agree that this approach helps pupils to realise that what they learn in science lessons can open up doors they may have never known existed before. And for that reason alone, they believe that an approach based on real-world connections is worth pursuing.