Nuffield Research Placements 2021 – Online applications are open The Nuffield Research Placement Scheme is aimed at the current 5th year pupils who will be sitting their Highers in 2020 and who are studying any Science, Technology, Engineering and/or Maths (STEM) and Social Science/Humanities subjects at that level. The placements help increase confidence and improve key skills including practical, communication, report-writing and presentation skills. Placements also provide students with excellent experiences & skills to include on CV’s and personal statements. By working with professional scientists and engineers in a real-life environment, the students gain an invaluable insight into a wide variety of careers. This is a wonderful opportunity for your students and we hope you will promote the scheme to them. The scheme, now managed by STEM Learning, aims to widen access, focusing on economic and social deprivation, and have found that students who come from lower income families, or whose parents have not attended higher education, benefit most from the scheme. In light of this, the scheme is now only open to these students (and priorities are placed on students eligible for the bursary). This means the charitable funding is targeted where it will have the greatest benefit. In 2020 although we did not have face-to-face placements we did still offer all students who had successfully applied virtual/online projects with supervisors and complimented these with research skills building modules (62 students in Scotland successfully completed projects). This year we are going for a blended approach and we are hoping to have face-to-face projects where possible (2-3 weeks, possibly staggered over a longer period), or if needed again virtual/online projects only, where government guidance and individual institutions and organisations policies permit or restrict. We will be implementing the research skills modules again and hope to roll these out to all successful applicants, even if they do not receive a project offer, and boost this with other skills opportunities, so most applicants will now benefit. *There is an eligibility checker on the application system so that students can check whether they are eligible or not, before beginning the application. https://www.stem.org.uk/nuffield-placement-tool To be eligible to apply for a Nuffield Research Placement, students must: • Be over 16 years old • Be in full-time state-funded education in the UK • Have at least 5 National 5 / GCSEs (or equivalent) at Level B / 6 or above, including maths, a science subject and English (or another humanities subject) • Be studying one or more Scottish Higher, A-level (or equivalent) in science, technology, engineering, economics, geography, psychology, computing, statistics or maths • Be able to spend several weeks (4-6) of their summer holiday working on research modules and the…
