A useful handbook for setting up a student-led STEM club, with exemplars from three schools.

It is increasingly recognised that giving students opportunities to act as ambassadors and mentors for STEM subjects outside of school can be of great benefit to the individual, their institution, and to the broader...

Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. They regulate and inspect to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages.

The Education and Inspections Act, which established the new Ofsted, specifically...

These activities from Cre8ate maths explore the efficient use of space in car parks. These are two-dimensional ‘best fit’ problems which require logic and a systematic approach to find effective solutions. They give students the chance to devise and test out strategies using systematic trial-and-improvement...

Using a set of simple ‘swap puzzles’, this CS4FN activity helps students to learn, fundamentally, what an algorithm is and how they can be made more efficient. Students are encouraged to create algorithms for solving the puzzles which can be used by future players to win, with no understanding of the game, in as...

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) has the goal of helping countries make informed decisions about how to improve teaching and learning in mathematics and science. This report summarizes the results of the TIMSS 2011 international mathematics assessment of fourth and eighth grade students...

This infographic gives a clear overview and summary of the progression of the Teach Computing Curriculum through each key stage and year group from the beginning of key stage 1 through to the end of key stage 4 with suggestions for post-16 options.

The Teach Computing Curriculum resources contain everything...

The aim of the Children’s Learning in Science Project (CLIS) was to discover how to use a constructivist approach to teach selected topics, and translate this into materials which could be used by teachers.

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Produced in 1993, this National Curriculum Council document was written to respond to the Secretary of State for Education’s proposals to address issues with the National Curriculum for technology at the time.

The key responses to the proposals include:
*The scope of ‘technology’– clarifying the...

Written the year after the introduction of the National Curriculum, this report from the Department of Education and Science specifies the Attainment Targets expected of students at all stages of compulsory education in technology. Programmes of Study are described, along with examples of work that students could...

This CS4FN activity from the team at Queen Mary University of London highlights some issues encountered during the design of human-computer interfaces (HCI). It acts as an introduction to HCI, introducing the need to translate problems and to understand how people behave.

The activities include a robot...

The Art of the Science Teacher, from the Nuffield Fundation, was published by the Science Teacher Education Project to provide background reading suitable for both student-teachers and serving teachers. Each chapter was written by experienced classroom teachers who had also been involved in teacher education. The...

This magic trick from the Computer Science for Fun team at QMUL shows that computing is about more than just programming and computational thinking is about more than just algorithms.

A simple mathematical approach is taken with dealt piles of cards – this allows the dealer to control the whereabouts of the...

This Cre8ate maths activity deals with the external costs of transport which affect society but which are not paid for by the transport users who cause them. Road, rail, air and water are compared. Mathematical connections involve working on inverse proportion, conversion calculations, compound percentage change...

This unplugged activity from the CS4FN team uses two examples – an insulting computer and one that can play snap – to look at simple computer programming, flow of control and logic. Everything is provided for this front-of-class activity, which would act as an effective starter for a lesson on programming concepts...

This report from Ofsted is based on a survey into the impact in schools of the government’s strategy for continuing professional development (CPD). The strategy was introduced in 2001 and subsequently relaunched in 2005. It aims to promote the benefits of CPD, help teachers make the most of the choices available,...