About us
We are a curriculum development and publishing company, based in the UK. Our team has been working towards ‘science done right’ for 20 years, through curriculum materials, courses, syllabuses, assessments, professional development, and consultancy to schools, national UK organisations, and ministries in other countries.
Our work
We have developed Blueprint, a rigorous 5-year curriculum plan for science in collaboration with a large awarding body. It will finally offer schools an antidote to the problem of having to get through an overstuffed KS3 and GCSE specification. Focussing on the concepts and skills students most need for GCSE success and developing them over 5 years, it will allow learning on depth so students are more prepared for demanding exam questions AO2 and AO3).
ENGAGE (2014-17): a European Commission project that has spread teaching of science through contemporary issues and enquiry to 15,000 teachers in 12 countries. We created the design and wrote all the curriculum materials. Download free Engage activities
WIKID (2008-2011): an 11-14 curriculum for teaching science through authentic problem solving and enquiry, which was adopted by 20% of the schools in the UK. Download free wikid activities
Science upd8 (2003-2007): science-in-the-news curriculum materials developed and published within a week. Most teachers in the UK used upd8, and there were 50,000+ subscribers worldwide. Download free upd8 activities
Dr Tony Sherborne
An academically successful but completely off-putting science education showed me what to avoid and motivated me to save others from the same fate. As a teacher I never had enough time to create the curriculum I wanted. Science upd8 and its successors come close to the kind of science teaching I’d like to have experienced. I’m obsessed with ‘backwards design’ in other words starting from the capabilities we want students to emerge from school with, and working backwards towards the curriculum that will deliver this – for all students.