Rachael Sharpe, Ian Abrahams, Nikolaos Fotou
In England, there is a growing need to improve the attainment in, and attitudes towards, science among disadvantaged secondary school pupils. This project was designed to support disadvantaged year 11 pupils (age 15–16) by pairing them with an undergraduate STEM student mentor throughout the final year of their compulsory science General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations course. The project found that mentored pupils did statistically significantly better in terms of attainment in both mock and actual GCSE examinations and also showed a statistically significantly greater improvement in their attitudes to science than un-mentored pupils.