Schools Outreach

Primary and Secondary Schools

In 2017, the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation introduced a new strategic schools outreach programme, focusing our schools outreach (key stage 2-4) on working with three partner secondary schools in Portsmouth and their feeder primary/junior schools. The idea behind this change is to provide a coherent programme of events and activities that school pupils will participate in throughout their school career, with the goal of moving away from one-off interactions to a sustained programme of repeat engagements with the same pupils.

This unfortunately means that we have limited capacity to work with other schools. Events that are open to schools outside of the schools outreach programme will be advertised and booked through the University of Portsmouth Recruitment and Outreach Team. However, if you have any questions about the schools outreach programme, or the ICG’s outreach and public engagement strategy, then please contact the ICG Public Engagement and Outreach Manager, Dr Jen Gupta (jennifer.gupta ‘at’ port.ac.uk).

ICG outreach activities are delivered both on campus at the university and on site at schools, by fully-trained members of the ICG and physics undergraduate students, and are are free for the school. The ICG schools outreach programme is supported by the South East Physics Network (SEPnet) and The Ogden Trust.

Post-16

The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation works with key stage 5 physics students through a variety of different programmes and events. For more information please click here.

Outreach for Visually Impaired Pupils

The ICG is home to the Tactile Universe, a project to open up topics in astrophysics to young people with vision impairments. We have created lesson plans and activities that use tactile images of galaxies and other astronomical objects, and trained people across the UK to use and deliver workshops using these resources. For more information, please visit the Tactile Universe website.