Our Engage Teacher Conference 2025 round-up

This June, members of the Engage Teacher Network and non-members alike joined us for our annual online Engage Teacher Conference. 

The Engage Teacher Network is an almost 3000-strong community of educators working with children and young people from groups most likely to be underrepresented in STEM; from lower socio-economic backgrounds, from ethnic minority backgrounds, attending schools in rural areas and with special educational needs.

The conference is part of a wider British Science Association programme to support teachers working in challenging circumstances. It aims to showcase inspiring best practice and provide practical tips and resources to help educators bring relevant and meaningful science to the classroom for all children and young people. 

If you missed the conference, all 10 sessions were recorded and are available to watch:

There’s no one better to give advice on running British Science Week, supporting young people with SEND and teaching science on a budget, than teachers themselves. So we asked experienced educators from the Engage community to share their wisdom:

At Boost your British Science Week: tap into teacher expertise, attendees heard brilliant suggestions for how to best plan for the Week and great advice about how to use the theme to brainstorm all sorts of cross-curricular connections and link to students’ interests. 
  
Panellists talked about how the Week is a fantastic opportunity to take some of the formality out of science, and how it’s not just positive for the young people involved; teacher confidence and cooperation develops, too!The next panel session, which wrapped up the first week of the conference, featured teachers from both mainstream and special schools - Unlock inclusive STEM: a teacher panel on supporting young people with SEND.

Practical science can be a brilliant way of engaging children and young people with STEM – it allows them to experiment and see the real-world science in action, it really can be inspiring.

Educators in mainstream settings talked about the importance of ensuring that young people with SEND were given suitable scaffolding and support to do the same work as their peers – keeping the curriculum ambitious for all students through adapted teaching, rather than differentiation. Teachers recommended a range of resources, including from the Primary Science Teaching Trust and the Education Endowment Fund. Find links to all the resources here.

Staying in the area of practical science, the teachers on the panel of Science on a budget: teacher-tested strategies shared priceless experience and approaches to finding free and low-cost ways to bring science to life in the classroom.

Tips included working with other departments in the school to see if they have equipment that could be used in science lessons, connect with local businesses to see if they can help with free resources, and laminate sheets instead of reprinting.

Inclusion is the name of the game this conference; as well as the teacher panel about supporting young people with SEND, there were two sessions on inclusive practice run by experts from the Institute of Physics (IoP) and the Association for Science Education (ASE).

At the IoP’s session, Top tips for inclusive science teaching, Eleanor Wylie and Suzanne Woolhouse discussed the importance of using inclusive language, making STEM learning relevant to the student’s lives and highlighting a broad range of STEM-related careers, among many other tips. Find a link to their top tips here.

Rob Butler and Vicki Parry from the ASE ran Engaging every student in science learning through inclusive practice, encouraged teachers to take an ‘evolution, not revolution’ approach to inclusive science teaching, focusing on how tweaks to practice can meet the need of learners with SEND and better engage students that don’t see science as for them. 

The ASE will run their Included and SEND CPD programmes again next academic year. Find out more here: https://www.ase.org.uk/events.  

We know there’s nothing better than free, high-quality teaching resources. So we invited lots of leading STEM organisations to speak at sessions for primary and secondary teachers and showcase the free, accessible materials they have to offer. There’s more out there than you might think! 

The secondary session was up first up - Save time and money: free secondary resources from leading providers.

First to present was the Head of Programmes at Apps for Good, who took us through the courses they offer to schools which allow students to develop technology skills and learn how to use it to encourage positive social change.

Attendees also heard from The Royal Society about their Brian Cox school experiments, the Royal Society of Chemistry on their resources which promote science literacy, and the National Education Nature Park on the habitat mapping project.

Caitlin Brown from the Sutton Trust took us through their programmes which support students from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM through to apprenticeships or high education after finishing school.

And if that wasn’t enough, they were joined by speakers from the Institute for Research in Schools, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, sharing their free resources and programmes. 

The primary session kicked off the second week of the conference - Save time and money: free primary resources from leading providers – with CREST Awards, the Royal Society and the National Educational Nature Park making their second appearances.

NUSTEM and the Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT) both focused on STEM careers, with PSTT sharing slides sharing ‘A scientist just like me’, a resource for showcasing a diverse range of scientists, while NUSTEM presented their Curriculum Careers Tool, which gives students access to a large database of careers they might not have thought of!  

Attendees also heard from My Science Club, Explorify, the British Ecological Society and Sustrans.

What would an Engage Teacher Conference be without sessions on CREST? It of course featured in both primary and secondary showcase resources, but attendees were also given the chance to hear more from members of the Education team at the BSA about the benefits of running CREST in dedicated sessions. 

Fun and accessible hands-on science for the primary classroom was led by our lovely Education Resources Manager, Catherine Davies. 

Catherine discussed the possible barriers to practical science in the classroom, including a lack of time and extra adult support, then shared how using CREST resources can support hands-on learning for children aged 3 all the way up to 11.

She talked through some of the activities, including Plant Detectives and Crafty Rafts, and support available to the Engage community.

The secondary session Turn curiosity into achievement: research and reflection in the curriculum, run our brilliant Education Officer Ruth Mackay, was a deep dive into how secondary CREST projects give students space to think about their approach to STEM, design their own experiments, and embed reflection into project work.

One of the final sessions of the conference was on a topic that will make all educator’s ears prick up – funding.

On 12 June, attendees heard from our own Susan Matambanazo, Education Manager at the BSA, and representatives from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, The Royal Society and Learning through Landscapes about a range of opportunities including grants and scholarships at Get funded! Explore STEM grant opportunities for schools.

If you teach in a school in challenging circumstances, join our community to hear about events, opportunities, and resources for schools like yours. You can join the network for free.
  

*STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and maths 

Thank you to all of the guest experts and educators who contributed to the 2025 Engage Teacher Conference and help contribute to a future where science is more relevant, representative, and connected to society.