Dr Anne Ryan says it's important kids can take part in our future. Photo / Supplied
Dr Anne Ryan says it's important kids can take part in our future. Photo / Supplied
A popular school programme aimed at getting Upper Hutt children's knowledge of science and technology up to a good level before college is in desperate need of funding.
Hutt Science has been offered in Lower Hutt for several years and receives council funding, but Upper Hutt kids may be goingwithout when funding in their area dries up at the end of this year.
The programme allows schools to book out science kits which are delivered by volunteers for children aged Years 1-8 to use. It also provides a range of other services, including teacher development, after-school programmes, and scholarship classes.
"We've got over 30 different types of kits," said Hutt Science's Dr Anne Ryan.
The kits ranged from forensic science crime scenes, where students had to work out who committed the crime, to bones and skeletons.
There are chemistry-based kits where kids experiment with acids and bases, or there were nanotech kits. All of them are "hands on" and created to suit the required age range.
Year 1 children can use a kit called "float my boat" where they build little aluminium boats and find out how much weight they can hold while still floating. Another option for youngsters includes a kit that allows them to practice programming a tiny robot and teaching it how to move in certain directions, among other things.
Oliver Hiscock, 12, and Sasha Clapham, 10, get hands on the with kits. Photo / Elias Rodriguez
For the older kids, the kits focused on things such as electricity in the future, and included anemometers so they could go to different parts of the school and measure the wind speed to determine where would be the best place to put a wind turbine.
Ryan said children were reaching college with very little science or technology knowledge, and by then they often did not have positive attitudes towards those study areas either.
She said a national survey had revealed 4 out of 5 kids reaching college did not have the expected levels of skills for those topics.
"I think it's an absolute disgrace, it's very, very worrying moving forward.
"Our whole future is going to be depending on science and technology . . . it's our responsibility to make sure our kids can be a part of that future."
Introducing science at primary school age in such a practical way helped kids develop an interest in it.
Ryan said the children were excited when they saw a kit arriving at school and "just really love them".
One child said it was "not like doing school at all, it's just really fun".
Upper Hutt City Council was able to provide funding for the programme until the end of this year, but cannot continue to do so, Ryan said.
Hutt Science was trying to foster a sense of "community ownership" among local businesses and the like. It also wanted to see central government step in and provide some type of science funding.
It costs $50,000 per year to provide the programme in Upper Hutt.
