Celebrating 15 years of education in the Clyde catchment
This year marks our 15th year of delivering education projects in the Clyde catchment. We first delivered ‘Clyde in the Classroom’ to five Primary Schools in Glasgow back in 2001. Increasing demand for outdoor education and our desire to engage more proactively with communities has led to opportunities for us to increase the presence of our scientists in schools and in 2015 we welcomed the 20,000th pupil to the project! Education now makes up about half of our work programme and we regularly work with in excess of 100 schools annually, which is around 20% of all Primaries in the Clyde catchment. In 2013 we embarked on our first Primary-to-Secondary education transition project called ‘Trout at Transition’ and we are now developing citizen science projects specifically for High Schools and look forward to broadening our Secondary education portfolio. We believe that engaging with the future stewards of the River Clyde – today’s young people – as well as the broader community, is critical in ‘caring for the Clyde’. We will build upon the links made within our existing education initiatives to grow the ‘river adoption’ model developed through ‘Healthy Rivers, Healthy Communities’ and continue to engage in projects that make rivers better understood – this way they can be better looked after!
The timeline below outlines the developments made in our Education Programme between 2001 and 2015.