MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London
Science for Health
NIMR helps Jamie’s Dream School
04 March 2011
Jamie Oliver wants to do something about the fact that nearly half of British children leave education without adequate qualifications. He has brought together some of Britain's most inspirational individuals to try their hand at teaching and see if they can persuade 20 young people to give education a second chance. The students are aged 16-18 years and all left school with little to show for the experience. A seven-part TV documentary series, Jamie’s Dream School, running on Channel 4 from 2 March, shows the results of his experiment.
The science teacher is Professor Robert Winston, but he was assisted by a team of other experts including some scientists from NIMR. There were seven science lessons; one was prepared by Clare Davy from NIMR’s Division of Virology and another was prepared by Charlotte Scott from NIMR’s Division of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics. Each lesson lasted about two hours. The MRC provided some funding and some resources from NIMR were used in the lessons.
Clare Davy designed, prepared and ran a lesson on DNA, after an introduction from Robert Winston. The students looked at cheek cells through a microscope, extracted DNA from the cheek cells and then ran gel electrophoresis on the samples. John Sawkins and Gareth Maglennon assisted with the lesson. Clare also advised on some of the other science lessons, drawing on her previous experience in devising innovative science lessons for schoolchildren.
It was certainly an eye-opening experience to work with this group of kids who for a variety of reasons had failed to get a previous good experience of education and who approached the lessons with a range of difficulties from lacking confidence to being extremely disruptive. Despite these issues many of the kids got fully involved in the lesson and several were particularly interested in the discussion of the DNA database held by the police.
Clare Davy
Clare Davy and Gareth Maglennon
Clare and Gareth in the teaching laboratory, preparing for the lesson.
Charlotte Scott wrote a lesson on stem cells, designing the experiments and arranging for scientific samples to be provided, then running the lesson with the assistance of Christophe Galichet. Charlotte was used to supervising school students in the laboratory, having supervised students during NIMR’s research summer school, but the Dream School was quite a bit more challenging. Although the lesson lasted only two hours, the preparation and clearing up time made it a long day.
It was an enjoyable experience and I would do it again, though it was very tiring. The most rewarding part of the day was when one student did take a real interest in the science and stayed behind after the lesson ended.
Charlotte Scott
Christophe Galichet and Charlotte Scott
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