By Orna Herr, Communications Officer (Education) at the British Science Association

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British Science Week 2025 wrapped up last month (7-16 March), and we were pleased to be able to give lots of schools Kick Start Grants of £400 to help fund their chosen events and activities.

Did you know one way to use Kick Start funds is to cover CREST application fees for CREST challenges and projects worked on during the Week? This is just what Claire Hawkridge, Second in Science at Outwood Academy Riverside, did this year.

Riverside is a secondary school in Middlesborough in challenging circumstances; it’s in one of the most deprived areas in England. Over half the students at Riverside are supported by pupil premium and over two thirds are from ethnic minority backgrounds, fulfilling two of the criteria for a Kick Start Grant.

Claire spoke to us about why she applied for the grant, the CREST Discovery challenges students took part in, how she made it cross-curricular and the difference the funding made.

“We want to do anything that we can to improve their life chances”

Growing up in a deprived area can have a huge impact on a young person’s future. As we explored in a previous blog, students from disadvantaged areas apply to university at a much lower rate than students from more affluent areas. This of course is reflected in the workforce, as we looked at in our blog ‘Innovation and the disadvantage gap’.

Teachers, including Claire, are keenly aware of this and work to give their students opportunities to succeed, and part of our mission is to support this.

We want to do anything that we can to improve their life chances, so we moved into applying for the [Kick Start] Grants to be able to put together something that's going to engage them with science.

Working CREST Discovery challenges, she told us, take STEM beyond the normal science curriculum and “bring a little bit of spark into the classroom. So we did that to take part in British Science Week.”

With the school budget being tight, and families not necessarily able to contribute, running CREST during British Science Week without funding support from BSA would not have been possible, Claire explained.

CREST Awards is the British Science Association’s (BSA) education programme that brings STEM to life for young people aged 3-19 through hands-on challenges and exciting projects.

“I chose [Stop the spread] in particular for them was because it looked fun”

Claire ran two Discovery challenges with her Year 7 and Year 9 cohorts, and Stop the spread and Enrich my classroom with ergonomics respectively, both of which can be found in the CREST Resource Library.

So why those challenges?

I chose that one [Stop the spread] in particular for [Year 7s] was because it looked fun and like it was going to engage the students.

Stop the spread  has young people working in self-led teams to design and build a hand-washing device for a school in Kenya. For context they’ll learn about the importance of clean water and sanitation.

The choice of Enrich my classroom with ergonomics was inspired by the Year 9 students’ questions about their classroom environment.

This challenge has young people thinking about objects they use in school every day – chairs and pens – and how they could be improved. Students would sometimes ask, Claire told us, why they had to sit on stools in the lab. Enrich my classroom gave them the chance to find out.

Designing pen grips was also close to home for the students, as Claire explained that some have mobility issues which could be helped by specially designed pens.

“Ultimately science is everything, isn't it”

Demonstrating to young people that science is intertwined with subjects across the curriculum is a key part of running CREST.

Claire achieved this successfully, particularly by having her Year 7s work on their Discovery projects in lesson time of history during British Science Week.

I did a takeover lesson into history where they were doing the history of water purification. They talked about John Snow…and how water is important, then linked it into your resources.

Discovery challenges usually take about five hours to complete, so Claire had her students do the prep work in the lead up to British Science Week, so they when the Week arrived they were ready to do the more fun, hands-on parts on the project.

How important is it to show the cross-curricular nature of science?

I think definitely it's important for them to say that even if they're not a scientist, that it still has a massive impact on their life, because ultimately science is everything, isn't it? It's just as far reaching as it can possibly be. 

So by linking it across and talking to other subjects, we're trying to get a little bit more buy in from children who are perhaps more interested in those subjects to be able to bring it across that way.

“Make sure that you're able to demonstrate what you're going to do with the funding”

Doing CREST during British Science Week was such a success that Claire is thinking ahead to 2026. 

I think we'll definitely be looking at it next year. We'll be looking at what the theme is and how we can put that into place and how we can work with the resources.

Claire’s tips for other schools thinking about applying to the BSA for funding is to go for it, but plan ahead:

You need to put that application in and make sure that you're able to demonstrate what you're going to do with the funding and that you're able to carry that through. So having that plan in place, making sure you've looked at the packs and figured out what you're going to do first.