Supporting greater coordination of UK STEM education

ACME was established in 2002 by the Royal Society and Joint Mathematical Council to act as a single voice for the mathematical community, seeking to improve the quality of education in schools and colleges. Until 2005, ACME was fully funded by Gatsby but now it receives 49% of its funding from the DCSF. ACME advises government on issues such as the curriculum, assessment and the supply of mathematics teachers, and now plays a major role in influencing mathematics policy-making in this country.

SCORE is a partnership between the Association for Science Education, the Biosciences Federation, the Institute of Biology, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Science Council. SCORE aims to improve science education in UK schools and colleges by harnessing the expertise, influence and resources of these key, independent organisations to support the development and implementation of effective education policy and projects.

Trustees have approved a major grant to support the creation and running costs of a National STEM Centre. The Centre is now opened and is co-located with the National Science Learning Centre (NSLC) in York. At the heart of the Centre is a resource collection which will, for the first time, assemble in one place a definitive collection of government, learned society, charitable foundation and commercial STEM curriculum support resources. The National STEM Centre promotes the use of the onsite facilities by mathematics, technology and engineering teachers and lecturers (in addition to the existing use by science teachers); and provide hot-desking facilities for the main STEM partner organisations in order to improve the national coordination and delivery of the Government’s STEM programme.

Gatsby is supportive of the government's aim to increase the number of after-school science and engineering clubs. To help support the national roll-out of these clubs, a grant has been made to STEMNET towards the costs of disseminating good practice and case studies from the initial 250 pilot clubs. In this way we hope to enable STEMNET to provide advice to other schools and a programme of workshops for club leaders to encourage the sharing of ideas.