Mrs. Maren Kelly

FROM ST CATHERINE’S PREP SCHOOL, BRAMLEY

Mrs. Maren Kelly speaks about how science is an integral part of the curriculum for the Prep and Senior schools, the many STEM-based clubs they offer, the importance of teaching science to girls and recently being awarded the Primary Science Quality Mark.

Would you like to begin by telling us how science is incorporated into daily life at St Catherine’s Prep and through to the Seniors?

It’s lovely to be able to talk to you today about how St Catherine’s Prep is inspiring the next generation of women scientists. In the Prep School, we have a really dedicated space called ‘The Wonder Lab’, which teaches science throughout the Prep School. The space is a really small version of a Senior School lab, with gas and electricity connection on each of the spaces within the lab. The seating spaces are around four of these different pods, which are dotted around the room, encouraging group work and discussion, which is really important and valuable when teaching science.

Each year group takes all science lessons in this lab, and we are really fortunate to have some lovely outdoor space around St Catherine’s Prep School, which includes a cottage garden and little woods where we can teach practical topics such as habitat and plant life. Science is a hands-on subject, and with many opportunities for our girls to learn about their world around them, it is lovely to have these opportunities and different spaces in and around the Prep School for this.

We also have extracurricular clubs, which are a really important part of the education programme at St Catherine’s. We have a number of great STEMbased clubs on offer. In total, we have over thirty clubs on offer for the girls, with the majority running over lunchtime. Some of the new STEM provision clubs this term include an Upcycling Club, Construction Club and an Empowering Women Club, where the girls have been discussing and researching women in science.

I have teamed up with the Head of IT this year, and we are offering a Pioneer of Science Club, which is a Girls’ School Association led competition, combining science with IT skills. We also have an annual Royal Society panel at our school, which, again, is teamwork between me and our Head Librarian - we are looking with the girls at the shortlisted Science Books of the Year, which have been chosen by the Royal Society. We are then discussing these with the girls and choosing our own winner.

As you can see, the girls have lots of opportunities in and out of lessons to learn and to build on their love of science.

How critical is it to inspire the imagination and develop critical thinking and investigation skills during the prep years in science, in order to secure or retain study of sciences at senior school?

I think our science education is becoming increasingly important in our society. With the advancement of technology each year, it is really important for every child to be taught science at a young age. First and foremost, I think science is a subject that helps children understand themselves and the world around them, and teaches them about the natural world and how things work and helps them develop critical thinking and problem thinking skills.

In science, the girls get the chance to explore, question and investigate, and, with this, understand better what their daily lives are really like. They learn teamwork, listening skills, and that we do not always have just one right answer to a question. Science is really important in education, and the science they receive at St Catherine’s is made enjoyable and engaging from Pre-Prep onwards.

We hope that many of the girls who will study science and discover their love of science will go on to being the next generation of girls who will help cure diseases or clean the oceans, or maybe even discover a new planet. Over 60% of our current Sixth Form students study Maths or a STEM subject. Our physicists are heading to CERN this Easter, which is nothing unusual at St Catherine’s. Many of our Prep School girls go on to study a STEM subject at their chosen university, and it is so inspiring and fabulous to see for the teachers as well as current pupils, that they may study Medicine at King’s or Natural Sciences at Durham or Computer Sciences at Southampton.

How do St Cat’s girls share their love of scientific enquiry?

Throughout the years, we have various different opportunities for all of the girls to collaborate with other schools and other pupils. We are very proactive with this and are always striving to make new connections and forming new friendships and collaborations with our local pre-prep and prep schools.

For example, we hosted a Science Show last year; we invited our local pre-prep and prep schools to develop their love of science. We have worked together with Tillingbourne Prep School on a project called ‘Superhero Scientist’, which had a cross-curricular theme to it. Our Head of Drama went to Tillingbourne and told the pupils about different science heroes through drama and movement, then we all enjoyed a session with the authors David Allen and Alex Sinclair, where we utilised these drama skills to bring the story of their book to life. We then continued to collaborate with them on a project making a flying machine based on Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. These collaborations involving different subjects as well as different schools have helped enormously in building the confidence and friendship amongst the girls as well as the teachers.

This year, I’ve been approached by Loseley Fields Primary School, and they have asked me to help them with their Science Week, so I will be going over there with our Science Mentors and will host a couple of science clubs for them in connection with this year’s Science Week topic, which is called ‘Connections’. We also have formed another collaboration with our local Prep School for boys, RGS Prep, where we have arranged to participate in their Science Week next week, and they will come to us in the Summer Term, when we will be hosting a science quiz. So, it is really important for our school to form these connections with other schools and to share our experiences and our love for science in that respect.

I understand that you have recently been awarded the PSQM award. Can you tell me more about what this process entailed?

The Primary Science Quality Mark (or PSQM for short) has been a real team effort and was a valuable experience to learn more about our science provision at our school, and how we as a team of staff, a school and community could improve upon that. So, you have to do an initial self-assessment, and with that you will reach a shared understanding of what your current position of science is at the school. That is in terms of leadership, teaching and learning.

So, to achieve the highest standard of this Primary Science Quality Mark, we had to show that our school is not just committed to improving the leadership, teaching and learning at the school, but also is committed to leading professional development and learning in other schools. So, with that in mind, we have helped and provided professional development and science capital in different schools for teachers and pupils as well as for parents.

There is regular media coverage about the dearth of women in scientific fields of employment and the ‘brain drain’ – how is your work now contributing to addressing this?

The recent studies have found that girls at singlesex schools were 85% more likely to take Advanced Mathematics than girls in co-ed schools, and 79% more likely to study Chemistry, 68% more likely to take Intermediate Mathematics and 47% more likely to study Physics.

So, it is therefore very important to give the girls a sense of enjoyment and freedom to discover science from an early age to help them establish aspiration and a sense of ‘I can do this’. Our girls certainly have a real sense of freedom to discover their passion and follow their aspirations and it’s a real pleasure just to be a little part of that journey of this discovery.

It is also really important to make sure that you link science with other STEM and non-STEM subjects together. So, I made sure that last year I established strong links between science and other subjects. For example, in DT, the girls have designed puppets, which supports their understanding of levers in the science topic. So, the links between science are really important, not just in those subjects but also in Maths and English, so they need to be securely embedded into that curriculum.

Our girls have certainly got a really engaging and exciting curriculum in all of the subjects, to see that science can come alive there too.

Can you tell me about future plans around STEM and science at St Catherine’s?

Yes, I recently hosted our annual

Association for Science Education).

We continue as a school to work together with the Senior School. We have invited the Astro Club, which is a Senior School girls’ club, to talk to our girls about their study of the stars and the universe with their online telescope, and I am really excited that they are coming over to the Prep School.

Pupils have the opportunity to participate in a huge range of different initiatives, which allows them to really witness first-hand how science affects daily lives, and hopefully inspire some to become future scientists.

We would like to thank the the Science Lead at St Catherine’s Prep School, Bramley, Mrs. Maren Kelly, for giving up her time to speak to us.

Science Cluster Group Meeting for all Heads of Science from schools all around Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex. This Cluster Group Meeting has been established by me since 2015 and discusses issues which we are all facing as Heads of Science. The group has been growing steadily and I was thrilled this year that I had the support of ASE (The www.stcatherines.info

Education Corner Podcast Interview With Deputy Head