Engaging Year 10 students through Particle Physics Workshop Activities

The aim of this project is to inspire GCSE-level students, especially those from under-represented groups, to pursue A-level choices and potentially careers in physics. We will develop hands-on workshop activities and live demonstrations showcasing aspects of our STFC funded experimental neutrino physics research.
A large focus will be on the accessibility and availability of the resources to allow us to extend the reach and long-term usability of these materials and build up a strong network of engaged schools. We will develop a public website that will serve as the main platform for sharing and marketing the materials, and we will work closely with existing partner, King's Maths School (KCLMS) to improve guidance and resources for teachers, including teacher training workshops to empower teachers to deliver our workshop activities independently. We will use existing networks and contacts and targeted advertising to extend the reach of the workshop resources, offering visits from our research group members across the London area.
Our existing collaboration with KCLMS already provides a framework to engage with a large audience of year 10 girls (~180 per year), through their annual summer school programme. Furthermore, we aim to quantify impact, and identify aspects of best practise, through their follow up surveys and recruitment programme.
The main impact performance indicators will be the number of school pupils and teachers engaging with our resources and a reported increase in enthusiasm for studying physics and maths beyond GCSE from surveys of pupils attending the activities.

The main vehicle for dissemination will be the project web-site. Through this we will share all the resources developed, and use this as the central point for advertising. Once the website is fully functional, we will start to share the link through various channels. We will directly email information to schools that we, and KCL already have a working relationship through initiatives such as previous outreach, the Gender Action, and Widening Participation programmes. Based on advice from physics teachers,
we will also investigate advertising options (in particular to promote the workshop for teachers) through the Institute of Physics, the STEM learning site, the Ogden trust the chatphysics Twitter page and the Association for Science education as well as through our existing social media accounts. During the final year of the grant, we will aim to present the work at relevant conferences, including a poster at the annual IoP HEPP conference, presentation at the KCL annual Teaching and Learning Conference and
talks at relevant Physics Education Conferences.