Birmingham:  Project Rationale

In Birmingham, the Physics Factory is an exciting collaboration between the Local Authority and King Edward VI Five Ways School. It has grown from the need to address the shortage of specialist physics teachers in the city and to improve the quality of student experiences in physics lessons. We believe our project will improve GCSE results and encourage more students study physics beyond 16. We will address this in two ways. Firstly, by increasing our commitment to the teacher CPD programme we offer and secondly by teaching GCSE physics to visiting students alongside their teachers.

The official opening in January 2009 saw students and their teachers from five schools designing and testing wind turbines to compete in the “Windy Challenge”. Initial funding from the Ogden Trust, KE Five Ways School and Birmingham LA enabled a room to be refurbished with the potential to become a ‘centre of excellence’. LA funding has also paid for approximately one third of the capital equipment needed. Further funds have been secured from the LA and KE Five Ways School to enable the project to employ teaching and technical staff. The intention is to have staff in post for September 2009, so that the physics GCSE curricular work can to be taught to visiting school students. Some GCSE sessions will be run by the Science Team during the summer term 2009.There is currently no funding guaranteed for the third year of the project. To date almost 100 teacher-CPD days have been delivered by the LA Science Team to Birmingham teachers and plans are in place for further training e.g. a two week course for teacher trainees.

We seek to work more closely with the regional and national science learning centres in the near future and gain their support for our work. In the longer term we envisage our pilot project being replicated across the city and perhaps beyond.
John Booth, Senior Science Adviser, Birmingham Education Authority

The Physics Factory Project is an imaginative and innovative concept

Lord Rees, Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society