The BSA offers various grants to schools to support the running of CREST Awards in lessons and beyond:
- Mayor’s London Scientist programme
If you teach or work at an eligible London-based state school, you can apply for a voucher code to run fully-funded CREST SuperStar, Discovery or Bronze Awards through the Mayor’s London Scientist scheme. Made possible by the Greater London Authority, this scheme offers a limited number of free CREST Awards each year, so find out more!
- Free CREST Awards in Wales
For the first time, all school students in Wales can now complete CREST Awards for free thanks to funding from the Welsh Government! This offering has the potential to make a huge difference to primary and secondary students’ learning and love of science across the nation.
- Free CREST Awards in Bristol, Cambridge, London and Manchester
If your school is based in any of these four cities and serves students who are disadvantaged in STEM, from October 2021 you could be eligible to apply for fully-funded CREST Awards of any level thanks to the support of Mewburn Ellis. The first schools to register for each region may also receive additional funding to help them invest in any resources needed to run the Awards!
- Underrepresented audiences grants
Supported by UKRI, the BSA’s underrepresented audiences grants help to remove the financial barriers that may otherwise prevent students from participating in CREST Awards. In two rounds over the Autumn and Spring Terms, eligible schools can apply for £300 to help them purchase relevant equipment and up to £300 to cover the cost of CREST Award registration fees. Application form available from the BAS early next school year.
If you are looking to run CREST Awards with students next year, get ahead of the game and download the BSA’s free primary and secondary curriculum guidance booklets! Specially designed for UK-based science teachers, these key planning tools explain exactly how to embed CREST projects into timetabled lessons with ease and efficiency.
Summer holidays
Motivate students to achieve a CREST Award at home this school summer holiday. Help younger children to get their hands and minds whirring with practical Star or SuperStar STEM activities, or enhance older students’ investigative skills, ingenuity and future UCAS and placement applications with a secondary-level CREST project. They can work through any of the ready-to-run projects on the CREST resource library or use the idea generator to solve a fresh STEM challenge of their own choosing. So long as the project follows the CREST framework, there are no bounds to what students can explore!