The Ogden Trust
In 1999, The Ogden Trust began awarding individual scholarships to bright students from less well-off backgrounds to enable them to access various educational avenues. This early ethos of increasing educational opportunity still remains, but the Trust is now more keenly focused on science, in particular physics and the physical processes.
The Ogden Trust aims to increase the uptake of physics for all at post-16, particularly for those from under-represented groups. The Trust supports schools, projects and programmes that are committed to enhancing physics teaching and learning. Through collaborative partnerships, enrichment and enhancement activities, working with families, developing career awareness and supporting teacher CPD, the Trust wants more students to develop a physics identity – to believe they can be a scientist and to see what studying physics can mean to them.
The priority audiences for the Trust include teachers without a physics background, teachers and students in remote rural areas or in areas of social deprivation, and students on free school meals.
School partnerships (primary and secondary) are at the heart of the Trust. The partnership programme support schools to offer hands-on, innovative science that could not be delivered by individual schools working alone. The programme is supported by Ogden Teacher Fellows, Outreach Officers, Regional Representatives and Consultants, and includes funding for events, CPD, equipment grants and a growing network of Phiz Labs. These specialised Phiz Labs have been created with the principal aim of stimulating primary children's interest and excitement in science, but they also provide a valuable, practical training venue for science teachers.
The Ogden Trust is now working collaboratively with the Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT) and with the PSQM to enhance the provision and prominence of primary science. We have provided Ogden bursaries to more than 20 schools to subsidise their participation in the PSQM programme, and we have a growing number of Ogden PSQM hubs already in place, led by Ogden Teacher Fellows.
