Science Teachers’ Association of New South Wales Inc.
Providing leadership and promoting excellence in science education
• The Office of Learning and Teaching Awards: these include Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, Awards for Programs that Enhance Learning and Awards for Teaching Excellence. www. olt. gov. au / awards-awardsandnominations
National Science Week and Science Week Grants 2017
ASTA National Science Week Representative for STANSW – Josephine Cali
The National Science Week program is a highly valuable program that offers students an opportunity to engage in learning beyond what is usually offered in the school Science curriculum. Grants are available to all preschools, primary and secondary schools. Resources to assist all members of the community are available from the Science Week website and the ASTA website. Schools in various parts of NSW, including remote and regional schools, had the opportunity to apply for a grant to celebrate science with students, parents, and the local community.
The ASTA theme for Science Week 2017 was“ The Future Earth”. Resources provided included an interactive online flip book as well as a downloadable copy of resources which could be printed by schools or shared electronically with students. A decision was also made to stop posting paper copies of posters to schools. Instead, more electronic versions of resources were made available so that schools could print what they needed. Members of the public, science teachers, students, parents and community members were able to freely download these. A small committee of NSW Science Teachers reviewed the School grant applications, which were then provided to Delese Brewster from ASTA who collated the grant applications for all of Australia and distributed the NSW Grant Applications to STANSW. A selection process was then followed to award grants for NSW as there were many more applications received than funds available. A small team, comprised of a STANSW Councillor and an Executive Member of STANSW, reviewed each application according to the following criteria published on the ASTA web site:
Each application will be assessed on the following criteria, which are of equal importance: 1. The grant should enable your school to conduct science, engineering and / or mathematics activities / events beyond its usual science program. 2. The activity / event should bring to the attention of students( and teachers and the community) the relevance of science to everyday life and / or to industry. 3. The activity / event should support the ongoing and increased participation in, and engagement with, science programs within your school. 4. The activity / event should be manageable with the funds granted and the contribution from your school and community. An indication of the funding / resources / personnel that your school is willing to contribute will help the selection panel determine the extent to which this criterion can be met. As in previous years, funding offered to applicants was not always the same as the amount requested. Due to the limited availability of funding, the costs of transport, food, routine science incursions and excursions( such as to museums / science centres) were not funded.
Projects that met all grant criteria were the only applications that were considered for a grant. Due to the large number of NSW Applications, those not meeting one or more of the criteria did not progress to the second stage of the selection process. Delese Brewster distributed the grants to the successful schools and a list of successful applicants was published on the ASTA web site. Many of the unsuccessful applications did not demonstrate sufficient detail to demonstrate how their project would take the students beyond its’ usual science program nor did they provide sufficient detail as to what the grant funds would be used for. Science Week 2017 was successful with preschools, primary
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