Universities and Science Minister David Willetts
Today’s speech by the Universities and Science Minister allocates just over £460m of the £600m allocated to science in the Autumn Statement to the ‘eight great technologies’ the Chancellor outlined in his speech at the Royal Society last year. Read More
Summary of Home Office (HO) introductory presentations
There is a Government mandate to reduce net migration down from approximately 240,000 to tens of thousands. The recent changes reflect the Government’s aim of reducing the numbers but also being more selective about the migrants the UK needs. These demonstrate that Britain is open for business. It was emphasised that the HO is keen to protect and encourage the UK as a science hub and that is why the changes encourage scientists to come to work and study in the UK. Read More
From the team behind Science Question Time, we bring you the nerdiest quiz of the year. Think you know your biochemistry from your badgers, and neutrinos from your nuclei? Or just want to relive your old sciencey school daze? Then grab some friends, come down to the Book Club, and show us what you’re made of.
We’ll be dredging up the year’s breakthroughs and blunders in science – taking in its highs and lows in the media, as well as use and abuse in politics. Special guests include:
There’ll be prizes for the geekiest costumes, nerdiest names, and brainiest teams – and, if you’re lucky, some very special guest appearances…
Entry is just £4, and teams can be up to 6 people. Any profits will go directly to support CaSE’s science & engineering advocacy.
Brought to you by James Lush at the Biochemical Society, Imran Khan and Beck Smith at the Campaign for Science and Engineering, and Dr Alice Bell.
The Green Party’s Cardiff conference saw the culmination of a two year process completely overhauling our science and technology policies. For me they finally feel like a firm place to stand.
In the past there had been the tendency for the party to view science with suspicion, as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. This resulted in what could only be described as some extraordinary and backwards positions in our policy document, Policies for a Sustainable Society (PSS).
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) hosted a Question Time in the Scottish Parliament on the 9th March in advance of the Scottish Elections, focussing on science. The event was opened by the RSC President David Phillips who talked the engagement role that the RSC has fulfilled for many years with Parliamentarians, including the Science and the Parliament annual event. He also talked of some of the goals of IYC2011 such as to increase the public appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs, to encourage interest in chemistry among young people, and to generate enthusiasm for the creative future of chemistry.
This is a transcript of John Denham MP’s speech at the 2011 CaSE Annual Lecture. You can listen to a recording of the speech here, or read a digest of it here.
Chairman,
I was delighted by your invitation to give this lecture in what is CaSE’s 25th anniversary year.
Previous lecturers have included both distinguished science ministers and distinguished scientists. I’m flattered to be in their company..
25 years ago, before e-communication, Twitter and Facebook, a group of scientists got in touch by phone, letter and perhaps a few new fangled fax machines to place an advert in the Times to launch Save British Science.
In 1986, climate change was a topic of discussion only in the best informed scientific circles. (To be fair, ten years earlier when I worked for Friends of the Earth, some of the after work pub discussion was about speculative science papers about a greenhouse effect, but I won’t claim we were sure it was really significant).
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The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE – the non-departmental public body responsible for distributing public money for teaching and research to universities and colleges) has announced its provisional funding for Higher Education Institutions in England today. There are reductions to research funding and a considerable reduction in capital funding which are going to raise concerns over the impact across science.
But there is a spot of very good news for medical research charities; the charity research support funding through which government partners charities to support the full costs of research in universities is being maintained in cash terms at £197.5 million. In 2009-10, medical research charities invested over £1 billion in medical research in the UK and a whopping 80% of this is spent in UK universities, so this fund is really important.
Co-authored by James Lush, CaSE intern, and Imran Khan, CaSE Director
The Home Office’s plans to restrict student visas present some potentially damaging implications for UK science and engineering. CaSE has responded to the consultation, here is a summary of our concerns and suggestions.
Language tests
The Government is planning to introduce tougher language tests for potential students. However, science and engineering are inherently international activities, with recognition based on academic merit.
This week the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published their latest report, Educating the next generation of scientists, examining increasing take-up and achievement, improving teaching staff and facilities, and developing a more coherent strategy for school science and maths.
The report recognises that the Department for Education has made impressive progress on aspects of science and maths secondary education in recent years, including triple science take-up (rising by almost 150% between 2004-05 and 2009-10), an increase in the number of pupils taking A-level chemistry and maths (though physics has increased more slowly) and increased attainment alongside take-up.
Dr Steve Tilling is Director of Communications at the Field Studies Council
Those of you with an interest in science education in our secondary schools might have seen a recent flurry of media coverage highlighting the need for more science fieldwork – using outdoor sites and experiences for teaching and learning in science. Most traditional biologists and earth scientists, and many physicists and chemists, would accept that taking students outside to learn about the world around them is a sensible way to introduce scientific concepts which otherwise remain abstract, intractable, and often divorced from everyday lives.
The ‘Outdoor Classroom’ is where many children discover how science really works – that sometimes science doesn’t bear any resemblance to the sanitised, prescribed, and formulaic version they might have encountered previously.
This is an edited version of the address CaSE Director Imran Khan gave at the campaign’s 25th Anniversary Reception.
On January 13th 1986, fifteen hundred scientists clubbed together and paid for advert, to appear in The Times. It called on the government to Save British Science – and thus a campaigning group was born.
Although we’ve changed our name, we’re still here, 25 years on. We’re still making it our mission to coax and cajole politicians of all stripes into supporting science and engineering.
CaSE marked our 25th birthday by looking ahead to the next 25 years of science and engineering policy. But it’s also worth taking a look back.
The Campaign for Science and Engineering last night celebrated reaching its 25th Anniversary by looking ahead to the next 25 years of science and engineering policy.
The 13th of January 1986 saw the publication in the Times of an advert, paid for by 1,500 scientists, calling on the government to ‘Save British Science’, leading to the birth of a campaign group. Save British Science changed its name to CaSE in 2005.
Ben Good and Chloe McIvor are students at the Imperial College Science Communication group.
Time changes many things. In the past 25 years we have experienced the birth of the internet, five different Prime Ministers – and the unexpected comeback of leg warmers. However, the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) is still going strong and yesterday celebrated its 25th anniversary at an event attended by the great and the good of British science.
The event, hosted by the Instituton of Engineering and Technology (IET) and sponsored by Nature, was held in Savoy Place with views looking out over some of the city’s greatest science and engineering achievements, such as the London Eye and the Millennium Bridge. It fitted well with the ethos of an evening that not only looked at CaSE’s past achievements, but looked forward to the challenges ahead.
Earlier today I said that capital spending on science and engineering would be down by 41% by the end of the Spending Review period in 2015. This is based on the Science Budget Allocations which came out earlier today.
But if you look at the total spend on capital over four years, the figures are slightly different.
Jennifer Dyer is the Diversity Programme Leader and Frances Ling is the Diversity Programme Coordinator at the Institute of Physics
On 23 November, the Institute of Physics hosted a highly successful and engaging one-day conference on the barriers to disabled students in science and engineering, It was attended by a wide range of delegates, including staff from professional bodies, academics, HEI disability practitioners and those working in widening participation.
The conference was in follow-up to the Institute’s publication in 2008, Access for All, which provided information to physics departments on how they can better recruit and support their disabled students in all areas of university life, from admissions through to teaching and learning and exams. With the advent of the Equality Act, it was timely for the Institute to kick-start discussions on how disabled people can be better recruited and retained in the sciences and engineering.
For immediate release – 23rd November 2010
The Home Secretary today announced a raft of new measures aimed at limiting the number of non-EU migrants entering the UK. In particular, the government has made changes to Tier 1 – the ‘highly skilled’ tier – replacing it with a new ‘exceptional talent’ route capped with a 1000 annual limit.
CaSE has welcomed the appointment of Prof Adrian Smith as the new Director General for Knowledge and Innovation (DG-KI) at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – the department responsible for the Science Budget.
The appointment comes after concern that, for the first time in decades, the position responsible for overseeing government activity on science was likely to go to a career civil servant with no direct experience of the science and engineering sector.
Imran Khan, Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said:
“Having an individual of Prof Smith’s calibre and background at the top level in Whitehall is essential. It’s really encouraging that government have recognised the importance of having someone who understands the research sector in charge of science at BIS.”
Commenting on the statement on Higher Education reform by David Willetts MP today, Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, Imran Khan, said:
“We welcome the Government’s efforts to tackle the funding challenges which face our universities – it would be hugely damaging for the UK if our top institutions fell behind in the international stakes. David Willetts has tried to be both bold and progressive in his response to the Browne review.”
I’ve written an extended response to the Spending Review’s implications for science and engineering for New Scientist’s “S Word” blog. You can read it here.
Imran
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