Science Teachers ’ Association of New South Wales Inc .
Providing leadership and promoting excellence in science education
• The Office of Learning and Teaching Awards : these include Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning , Awards for Programs that Enhance Learning and Awards for Teaching Excellence . www . olt . gov . au / awards-awardsandnominations
National Science Week and Science Week Grants 2017
ASTA National Science Week Representative for STANSW – Josephine Cali
The National Science Week program is a highly valuable program that offers students an opportunity to engage in learning beyond what is usually offered in the school Science curriculum . Grants are available to all preschools , primary and secondary schools . Resources to assist all members of the community are available from the Science Week website and the ASTA website . Schools in various parts of NSW , including remote and regional schools , had the opportunity to apply for a grant to celebrate science with students , parents , and the local community .
The ASTA theme for Science Week 2017 was “ The Future Earth ”. Resources provided included an interactive online flip book as well as a downloadable copy of resources which could be printed by schools or shared electronically with students . A decision was also made to stop posting paper copies of posters to schools . Instead , more electronic versions of resources were made available so that schools could print what they needed . Members of the public , science teachers , students , parents and community members were able to freely download these . A small committee of NSW Science Teachers reviewed the School grant applications , which were then provided to Delese Brewster from ASTA who collated the grant applications for all of Australia and distributed the NSW Grant Applications to STANSW . A selection process was then followed to award grants for NSW as there were many more applications received than funds available . A small team , comprised of a STANSW Councillor and an Executive Member of STANSW , reviewed each application according to the following criteria published on the ASTA web site :
Each application will be assessed on the following criteria , which are of equal importance : 1 . The grant should enable your school to conduct science , engineering and / or mathematics activities / events beyond its usual science program . 2 . The activity / event should bring to the attention of students ( and teachers and the community ) the relevance of science to everyday life and / or to industry . 3 . The activity / event should support the ongoing and increased participation in , and engagement with , science programs within your school . 4 . The activity / event should be manageable with the funds granted and the contribution from your school and community . An indication of the funding / resources / personnel that your school is willing to contribute will help the selection panel determine the extent to which this criterion can be met . As in previous years , funding offered to applicants was not always the same as the amount requested . Due to the limited availability of funding , the costs of transport , food , routine science incursions and excursions ( such as to museums / science centres ) were not funded .
Projects that met all grant criteria were the only applications that were considered for a grant . Due to the large number of NSW Applications , those not meeting one or more of the criteria did not progress to the second stage of the selection process . Delese Brewster distributed the grants to the successful schools and a list of successful applicants was published on the ASTA web site . Many of the unsuccessful applications did not demonstrate sufficient detail to demonstrate how their project would take the students beyond its ’ usual science program nor did they provide sufficient detail as to what the grant funds would be used for . Science Week 2017 was successful with preschools , primary
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