Primary School Children

Lord Winston Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I do indeed. The noble Lord is right that stereotyping happens at a very early stage and research shows that it is more pronounced among the lower-income groups. That is why I am so pleased that we have initiatives such as STEM Ambassadors, which sends volunteers out to visit children in primary as well as secondary schools. Some 42% of those ambassadors are women and we had over 30,000 volunteers last year. Indeed, I discovered at the weekend that my own daughter, when she was reading chemical engineering, was one of those STEM ambassadors and she visited schools to do as the noble Lord suggested.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as President’s Envoy for Outreach at Imperial College. In the past six months, I have visited between 20 and 30 primary schools dealing with basic scientific issues for children between eight and 10. It is astonishing when you ask them which is the commonest gas in the atmosphere. They might come up with oxygen; they mostly come up with carbon dioxide and sometimes come up with hydrogen. Nitrogen is never recognised. Recently, when a child opted for nitrogen as the commonest gas, the science teacher told him in my presence that he was wrong. The problem is that the basic scientific knowledge of so many excellent primary school teachers is woefully inadequate. While the Government apparently recognise the value of primary school teachers, they do not do enough to ensure proper training in science, which leads children to so many of these careers. What can the Government do about that?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, what can I say? I accept that primary school teachers have to be generalists across a wide range of subjects. The noble Lord came across a disappointing example where the teacher was not necessarily explaining science properly. But we are doing more work on improving the curriculum in primary schools, and science is a key part of that.