26 May 2021
It was a sad but proud occasion for the Abingdon Science Partnership, ASP, to say goodbye and good luck to its current team of upper sixth Senior Science Ambassadors. Many of them have been engaged in ASP projects for several years. Freddie Nicholson and Alfie Marshall were part of the ATLAScraft project when they were in Third Year, working with three other schools, two universities and scientists at CERN to develop a Minecraft simulation of the ATLAS particle detector. Zebedee Marsh was a Science Busker at the Abingdon ATOM Festival of Science and Technology in 2019 and has helped run the weekly Primary Science Club since then, along with Jake Wallis and James Sparkes who started helping in Fifth Year and Alex Oldham who joined them in Lower Sixth.
As well as gaining invaluable personal experience of teamwork, planning and teaching skills, their involvement with ASP helped them to gain Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards and even a Gold CREST award in Freddie’s case. Their most important achievement without doubt though has been their contribution to promoting enjoyment and confidence in science amongst the primary school children they have worked with, both in person and remotely. Although their skills and experience will be sorely missed, they have also trained up new Science Ambassadors from Fourth Year upwards who cannot wait for restrictions to be lifted so that live Primary Science Clubs can begin again. All the staff involved in ASP and Primary Science Club wish the Senior Science Ambassadors luck and would like to say a huge thank you to them for making the Primary Science Club one of the best OH activities for any teacher to help supervise!
