1.  DESCRIPTION OF CENTRE

  1.1  SEARCH is a hands-on centre established by Hampshire County Council's Museums and Archives Centre in an old school building in 1995 to provide educational access to the County's museum collections. The centre has two areas—SEARCH for History and SEARCH for Science. It also provides toilets, lunch rooms and a coach parking space for visiting school groups.

  1.2  The core audience is Key Stage 1 and 2 school groups, but there is also a growing audience of Early Years groups and a programme for families, including holiday activities and open days linked to events such as National Science and Technology Week. SEARCH for Science is also used for more specialist wildlife identification workshops run by the Museums Service's Senior Keeper of Natural Sciences as a contribution to the Hampshire Biodiversity Information Centre Partnership programme.

  1.3  The Science area is a hands-on discovery centre with a wealth of natural history specimens as well as interpretive models and equipment for studying the specimens, including two video microscopes. The specimens mainly comprise stuffed vertebrates and boxed or embedded invertebrates.

2.  SCIENCE CURRICULUM LINKS

  2.1  School groups undertake 2-hour science workshops on a choice of subjects linked to the Science National Curriculum, including Animals and Classification, Food Chains, Animal Adaptations, Rocks and Soils, Skeletons and Movement and Teeth and Eating.

  2.2  An annual partnership project with the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, also in Gosport, allows schools in deprived wards to have whole day science workshops at both museums at the age of transfer to KS3. This Inspiring Science Project aims to raise interest and attainment in science in Year 6 children prior to the end of Key Stage SATs. The SEARCH workshop covers a range of natural science concepts drawn from all the sessions in 2.1. The workshop at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum covers physical science concepts such as Forces.

  2.3  The History workshops run at SEARCH also have a scientific content as they all cover Materials and the Archaeology workshop has a lot of environmental science in it.

3.  VISITOR NUMBERS

  3.1  In 2006 SEARCH had 13,616 visitors of who 10,004 were children. 8,747 of these were children in school groups. This figure is slightly lower than the previous two years because of falling class sizes in Hampshire. SEARCH consistently runs more 300 school sessions every year.

  3.2  Each visitor is staying at the museum for around two hours and, other than the drop-in open days, they are having an expert led experience with in-depth interpretation.

4.  FUNDING

  4.1  SEARCH is funded by Hampshire County Council through the Museums and Archives Service within the Recreation and Heritage Department. The Council owns and maintains the building and pays for essential building repairs and maintenance.

  4.2  The staff are: SEARCH Manager, the Science Education Officer, an Administrative Officer and a Premises Supervisor. The total cost of employing them is £125,000 per annum and other (mainly property) costs bring the total cost to approaching £160,000 per annum. This is partly offset by income of over £30,000 leaving net expenditure of £125,000 per annum.

  4.3  A further Education Officer is funded partly through income generation from school visits and partly from the SE Museums Hub (Renaissance in the Regions funding), which also funds a term time lunchtime assistant and a one day a week school session leader.

  4.4  Schools pay £68 (the rate increases each year in line with inflation) for their workshops, which covers entry for up to 35 children with their adult helpers, use of a lunch room, all equipment, stationery and worksheets and a teacher's resource pack. This charge offsets some of the cost of resourcing the session and providing the session leader. Income is also raised through holiday workshops and training courses run by SEARCH staff.

5.  IMPACT AND BENEFITS

  5.1  With over 10,000 children a year benefiting from science workshops at SEARCH, the centre is certainly having an impact on science education in Hampshire. Schools come from all over the county, not just from the Gosport area. Grant funded projects and free open days ensure that all children can participate.

  5.2  Visitor feedback is collected from teachers, children and family visitors, using the Generic Learning Outcomes of the MLA's Inspiring Learning For All Framework to get some measure of the impact of the service on learning. Evaluations are used to further develop the service.

  5.3  SEARCH would be happy to provide case studies of science learning projects that have been evaluated and demonstrate the very positive effect the workshops have had on children's learning, motivation and enjoyment of science.

  5.4  SEARCH for Science has been open for long enough to see its impact over time. We sometimes meet young people in their teens and twenties who are now undertaking science degrees and say that their interest was sparked by visits to SEARCH as children. Some students doing GCSE, A1 or A2 course work remember visiting the centre as children and return to use the resources for their projects.

6.  SUMMARY

  SEARCH for Science is a Local Authority (Hampshire County Council) funded science discovery centre, providing hands-on natural science activities for schools, families and other audiences in Hampshire, contributing to both formal science education and to Lifelong Learning. Around 14,000 visitors a year benefit from in-depth and lengthy visits to the centre. Visitor feedback and other evaluation suggests that this investment in science education has a very positive impact.

June 2007