BEAR Scotland manages the nation-wide STEM Engineering Education Schools Programme on behalf of Transport Scotland, which was relaunched May last year.

The latest academic year has been very busy with 12,153 school pupils from 294 schools across Scotland taking part in both face-to-face and virtual education sessions between August 2023 and June 2024. Schools from 28 of the 32 local authority areas participated, with the highest number from Fife and North Lanarkshire.

The face-to-face programme, run out of the Contact and Education Centre at Queensferry, attracted 6,305 pupils from 114 schools who also went out onto the Forth Road Bridge as part of their field trip.

A further 5,848 pupils (179 schools) took advantage of the on-line interactive presentation session and follow-up engineering challenges.

Teacher and learner feedback for the sessions was excellent. 99% of teachers rated the programme as 4 or 5 out of 5 stars and indicated that they would participate again.

The feedback from one high school teacher who attended with their pupils was typical: “The activities were excellent, especially suited to our Engineering Science curriculum.  The pupils enjoyed management roles and took their duties very seriously!  It was great to see them engaged throughout, working together to find solutions.  The course was very well organised, informative and engaging.”

Elaine Barrie, who manages and delivers the schools education programme explains: “We’re very proud of what we’ve delivered over the school year but there’s always an opportunity to improve. For instance, we noticed that there was less take-up from high schools. So, our focus for the 2024-25 academic year is to encourage participation from more secondary schools. We already have 30 high schools booked and anticipate more before we open for primary school bookings in August.”

Do you know any teachers or pupils who would like to get involved to find out about what our engineers do? Click here for more information on the STEM schools programme or contact SchoolSTEM@bearscotland.co.uk