Department secures funding for reaching out to schools

School pupils should learn a little more about the excitement and importance of studying plants following the award to the Department of £100,000 over three years for a schools education programme. The award, made under HEFCE's Widening Participation initiatives, enables the Department, in collaboration with Science and Plants for Schools, to encourage applications to universities from pupils who would otherwise be unlikely to consider tertiary education. The project will be led by Dr Leighton Dann, formerly a teacher at Roundwood Park School, Hertfordshire, and recently a SAPS Schoolteacher-Fellow at Robinson College, where he advised the Colleges on admissions policy and developed molecular biology techniques which could be applied in school laboratories.