Our
Vision
Orbyts believes that science should be truly inclusive for everyone, regardless of income-background, ethnicity, or gender.
To facilitate this, we pair researchers with schools to empower school students, researchers, and teachers through inspirational science research partnerships.
Why is Orbyts needed?
UK science faces systemic diversity issues and shortages of science teachers.
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This is evidenced by the Institute of Physics reporting that less than 20% of the post-16 physics cohort are girls, while those from the most deprived backgrounds are 3 times less likely to take A-level physics and 6 times less likely to achieve the top grade compared to their counterparts from a higher income background. One in seven schools also do not have a physics teacher.
Less than 20% of post-16 physics students are girls
1 in 7 schools do not have a physics teacher
How does Orbyts work?
Orbyts creates partnerships between scientists and schools, empowering school students to conduct their own original science research projects, while providing them with relatable science role models who dispel harmful stereotypes about who can be a scientist.
Every research project is created bespoke for each school, with the project depending entirely on the expertise of the scientist that a school is paired with.
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Our scientists visit their partner school on a weekly to fortnightly basis over several school terms to support the school's involvement with the research. The project begins with the scientist leading the research but by the middle of the project, the ownership is transferred to the school students ensuring that they choose the direction that
that the science takes and the avenues that they wish to explore. This sense of agency shifts student perceptions from science as a body of inherited knowledge to something that our next generation create and own themselves. Each year, our Orbyts programme closes with a conference, at which all of our partner schools present their discoveries.​​
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50%
at least
To ensure that these opportunities go to those who need them most, we ask that any school that joins Orbyts ensures that at least 50% of students on an Orbyts project are girls and minority genders and at least 50% are pupil premium and SEND students.
Pupil Premium and SEND students
Girls and minority genders
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How does Orbyts make academia more equitable while supporting the leadership potential of scientists?
We work closely with our partner scientists, to support the production of a project that benefits their research and grows their leadership profile, whilst enabling school students to have a genuine impact on the field. Ensuring this school-researcher symbiosis and mutual-benefit is at the heart of our ethos and success and we have developed this over the delivery of 100s of bespoke research projects.
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Beyond support for the project itself, Orbyts runs monthly training for researchers. These expert-led sessions embed evidence-based practice for inclusivity, teaching, communication and management within university research groups. Through these and the classroom experience, the next generation of UK lecturers and fellows are given the firmest foundations for pedagogy and management training, unavailable within a standard PhD programme.