SPECIAL EDITION Issue 7 + 8 December 2017 Bumper thebrilliantclub.org Pack! If I was given the opportunity, would I go to space? + 43 new academic essays from Brilliant Club young scholars in this special edition 1 Vol. 1 No. 7 + 8, December 2017 This issue The Brilliant Club Contents What is The Brilliant Club? The Brilliant Club is an award-winning charity that exists to widen access to highly-selective universities for under-represented pupils. We do this by mobilising researchers to bring their academic expertise into state schools through two core programmes: The Scholars Programme and Researchers in Schools. The Scholars Programme trains PhD and postdoctoral researchers to deliver university-style courses with rigorous academic challenges to small groups of pupils. These courses begin and end with 3 8 information, advice and guidance trips to highly- selective universities. Researchers in Schools is a What is The Brilliant Club? STEM Articles unique teacher training route, designed exclusively Learn about our mission This term, we hear from scholars in the for PhD graduates. It provides the training necessary and programmes. Science, Technology, Engineering and for PhD graduates to become excellent classroom Maths disciplines on subjects including teachers and university-access champions within climate change, internet privacy, machine 4 their schools. Both programmes are designed to learning and space exploration. support pupils to develop the knowledge, skills and News confidence necessary to secure places at highly- All of the latest news from selective universities. The Brilliant Club. 66 Arts and Humanities Articles The Brilliant Club is building a national movement The Arts and Humanities articles in this to mobilise PhD researchers to engage with state edition include topics on Avant-Garde 6 schools serving low HE-participation communities. poetry and street artist, Banksy. Research Highlights At present, we are supporting over 500 PhD tutors Including updates in climate change, 99 from 30 universities to work with more than 10,000 developmental biology, astronomy and pupils from over 550 schools across the UK. Through infection. Social Sciences Articles The Scholars Programme, our PhD tutors deliver Our social Sciences scholars look at courses of university-style learning to pupils from topics such as racial stereotyping and Year 5 through to Year 12. The courses they deliver social justice for indigenous minority 7 focus on fascinating topics ranging from ‘Are Some groups. Guest Article Infinities Bigger than Others?’ to ‘Making Maps, Guest article from Professor Tim Leuing. Constructing Worlds: Geopolitics and Geography’. Associate Professor of Economic History, LSE and Former Chief Scientific Advisor, As the diagram to the right shows, The Scholars Department for Education Programme consists of trips to highly-selective universities, a series of tutorials and the completion of university-style assignments, as well as one-to- one feedback for pupils from their PhD tutors. It is the best of these university-style assignments that are debuted here, in The Scholar. We are delighted to showcase our pupils’ work and celebrate their achievements in the country’s only academic journal dedicated to publishing university-style assignments authored by school pupils. Publishing original work is an important component of academia and it is exciting for us to introduce our pupils not only to the world of research but also to the next stage of publishing in academic journals. 2 3 Vol. 1 No. 7 + 8, December 2017 Updates Updates News from The Brilliant Club News from The Brilliant Club Scholars Programme pupils now Our Researchers in Schools programme benefit from an extra feedback tutorial is now recruiting for its 2018 cohort! Pupils on The Scholars Programme are now able to Researchers in Schools is a unique teacher training and Welcome to a very special attend an additional one-to-one feedback session with development programme. It is specifically designed to edition of The Scholar! their PhD Tutor! Research and evaluation conducted by utilise the academic expertise of PhD graduates for the the Research and Impact Department at The Brilliant benefit of pupils, schools and universities. Club has demonstrated that the additional feedback This edition is a bumper pack, containing 44 session supports pupils to attain the most value from We are now recruiting PhD graduates to join our 2018 fantastic articles authored by Brilliant Club their university-style learning experience. cohort! This year we are excited to announce that we pupils. For the first time, it includes work by are working to significantly increase the number of pupils who completed Uni Pathways, the The Scholars Programme team are busy working with participants training to teach subjects other than maths university access course led by our Researchers schools and tutors to make sure that as many pupils as and physics. While we have focused on these subjects in Schools participants . Researchers in Schools possible get to take part in the programme in the spring historically, we are now recruiting participants in English, is the UK’s only teacher training programme and summer terms. We are now almost fully subscribed history, geography, languages and the other sciences. exclusively designed for PhD graduates. for 2017/18 so if you are a teacher interested in running We aim to place participants into non-selective state The Scholars Programme in your school, do get in touch schools in all areas of England. The map to the right shows the locations of all as soon as possible with the relevant contact below: our pupils featured in this edition of The Scholar, If you would like to learn more about training to be a including one pupil in Glasgow, Scotland! The teacher with Researchers in Schools, please visit Brilliant Club aims to make its programmes www.researchersinschools.org. available to any school that wants to take part and we are committed to serving rural and coastal areas, as well as inner cities. The Brilliant Club announces its new Scotland and the North of England Dr Natalie Day [email protected] podcast, UniTalks In November, the State of the Nation report was released by Government and featured a East of England Lucy Preston The Brilliant Club is preparing to release its new podcast case study of The Brilliant Club’s work in rural [email protected] UniTallks in January 2018! Created in collaboration with the and coastal areas. Of the 10, 500 pupils we South of England Steph Hamilton Institute of Arts and Ideas, UniTalks aims to answer many work with, one fifth are in rural schools. We are [email protected] of the questions that pupils may have about applying to very proud of our work in these communities Midlands and West of England Joe Loudon and studying at university. Aimed at Key Stage 4 and 5 and will continue to work with our partner [email protected] pupils thinking about applying to university, the podcast universities and fantastic tutors to deliver will see Brilliant Club pupils interrogate leading thinkers excellent programmes to rural and coastal Wales Greg Scannell [email protected] from the UK’s best universities about their subjects and schools in 2017/18! academic experience. Across are some brief updates from The Brilliant The map above shows the locations of all pupils featured. UniTalks will also feature a university agony aunt section, Club on our forthcoming podcast, Uni Talks; where the admissions team at King’s College London will The Scholars Programme and Researchers in answer questions submitted by pupils from across the Schools. country, covering topics like university finances, choosing a course and moving out of home. We hope you enjoy this edition of The Scholar, The Brilliant Club’s academic journal dedicated We believe the podcast will be an exciting resource for to the work of state school pupils. If you would pupils and teachers so do look out for UniTalks in 2018! like more information on The Brilliant Club and how you can get involved, please visit our website at www.thebrilliantclub.org or send an email to [email protected]. Thank you! 4 5 Vol. 1 No. 7 + 8, December 2017 Research Highlights Guest Article Aim High and Apply Professor Tim Leuing Associate Professor of Economic History, LSE and Former Chief Scientific Advisor, Department for Education Climate Change Developmental Biology Lasting heavy rains to come Human–pig embryo made The volume of rain produced by individual storms is projected Human stem cells can integrate into developing pig to rise in the coming years thanks to global warming. embryos, a finding that could lead to new ways of growing human organs and studying early human development. Rainfall is expected to become more intense in a warming world, but how the duration of discrete events might Previous attempts to engraft human stem cells into change has not been clear. David Neelin at the University developing mice have met with limited success. Juan of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues used a global Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute for Biological climate model and statistical theory to analyse how the Studies in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues instead upper limit of water accumulated in individual rainfall events worked with embryos of pigs, which are biologically more might change in a warming climate. They found that if similar to humans. They injected various types of human temperatures rise by 3 °C above preindustrial temperatures, pluripotent stem cell — which can develop into any cell type the probability of the largest regional precipitation events — into balls of cells called blastocysts that become embryos. observed in the past increases as much as tenfold in Early-stage human pluripotent stem cells integrated into the most regions. By the end of the century, unprecedented blastocysts, but only stem cells injected at an intermediate Twenty-nine years ago I applied to Oxford.