3 million pound investment for future of science and mathematics education

• What are the key factors that shape patterns of participation, engagement and achievement in science and/or mathematics education by children and young people and what does this tell us about the kinds of intervention that are likely to have greatest impact on participation, engagement and achievement?
  
  
• What can we learn from the effectiveness of past and current interventions, initiatives and practice to inform the design and development of more effective interventions, initiatives and practice?
  
  
• How can research-informed approaches help to address some of the key challenges in enhancing participation, engagement and achievement in science/mathematics identified by recent research and reports?
  
  
• What specific new interventions or changed in policy or practice offer the greatest potential to improve participation, engagement and learning in science/mathematics and how could their potential effectiveness and feasibility be assessed more fully?
  
  

3. The Government’s Science and Innovation Framework 2004-2014, published in March 2006 sets challenging targets for enhancing take-up and achievement in science and mathematics in schools and colleges. It is also relevant to other challenges such as ‘Succeeding in the Global Economy’ and ‘Understanding Individual Behaviour’ and will contribute to other strategic priorities in terms of capacity building, international collaboration, stakeholder engagement, partnership, knowledge transfer and science & society.

4. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's largest funding agency for research and postgraduate training relating to social and economic issues. It supports independent, high quality research which impacts on business, the public sector and the third sector. The ESRC’s planned total expenditure in 2008/09 is £203 million. At any one time the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and research policy institutes. More at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk

5. ESRC Society Today offers free access to a broad range of social science research and presents it in a way that makes it easy to navigate and saves users valuable time. As well as bringing together all ESRC-funded research and key online resources such as the Social Science Information Gateway and the UK Data Archive, non-ESRC resources are included, for example the Office for National Statistics. The portal provides access to early findings and research summaries, as well as full texts and original datasets through integrated search facilities. More at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk