Memorandum 94
Supplementary submission from the University
of Leicester
NATIONAL SPACE EDUCATION INITIATIVE
BACKGROUND NOTES
BY PROF
M A BARSTOW
The National Space Education Initiative was
a broad idea developed by the BNSC partners to try to raise the
profile of Space as an important tool for stimulating schools
student engagement with science. While Charles Clarke was Secretary
of State for Education, this idea received warm encouragement
and more detailed plans were developed. As part of this, I was
commissioned to carry out a study of what was going on in Space
Education and to produce some costed proposals as what could be
done to improve coordination and deliver more effectively the
wide range of activities that had already been funded through
outreach grants. This work was carried out in the period March
to September 2005 and the report on the study, "Bringing
Space into School Science" (sometimes referred to as
the Barstow Report) was published on October 2005.
A number of events conspired to limit the opportunity
to make progress following the publication of the report. During
the study, Charles Clarke was replaced as Secretary of State by
Ruth Kelly. As a result, the interest in Space Education (encouraged
by Charles Clarke) disappeared and the re-arrangement of the department
created a significant discontinuity in the involvement of DfES
in the project. Furthermore, expected financial support from DfES
for carrying out the report's recommendations evaporated. Shortly
after the publication of my report, Colin Hicks, BNSC Director
General retired and was replaced by David Williams. Inevitably,
it has taken some time for Dr Williams to familiarise himself
with his role as DG and to find time, within all his priorities,
to revisit Space Education.
It is possible that some of the recommendations
of my report may be delivered by a new initiative to establish
a European Space Resource Office (ESERO) in the UK, by ESA. ESA
have pilot offices operating elsewhere in Europe but had not planned
one in the UK in the first phase. However, they received an offer
from Yorkshire Forward to host one using Regional Development
funds. Subsequently, BNSC have begun working with Yorkshire Forward
to develop this and engage the national community. So far substantive
progress seems to be slow. The whole idea has been discussed in
several meetings since August 2005 and we don't yet seem to be
at the stage of actually doing anything.
I was very please to be able attend the Parliamentary
Space Committee event on 8 November, where our current Secretary
of State for Education met the STS-121 Astronauts. It was nice
to hear Alan Johnson talk about the importance of Space in science
education and I wrote to him afterwards, enclosing a copy of my
report. He has written back but avoided offering the DfES lead
that I had hoped for, pushing the responsibility back to BNSC.
One of my key recommendations was that Space should be adopted
nationally as a flagship topic to enhance science teaching and
it seems to me that this has to come from the DfES if teachers
are going to sign up to the idea.
January 2007
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