Playforce donates generous prizes for our Big Science Event 2020

Playground experts, Playforce are kindly donating generous prizes to the winners of our 2020 Big Science Event competition for primary school pupils. The winning schools in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire will each receive a £1000 voucher to install playground equipment of their choice. How good is that?

With 20 years of experiences and 8844 playgrounds under their belt, Playforce are the UK experts in creating and delivering exciting play spaces and playground equipment – from sand pits to wooden garden planters and from play barns to outdoor drawing boards. Their generous vouchers will enable winning schools to pick and choose the playground equipment that’s best for their school.

Sophie Batin, our Education and Outreach Manager says, “It is fantastic to have the support of Playforce for our Big Science Event 2020. Their donation of a £1000 voucher to the winning schools for play equipment is a real incentive for the children involved.”

The Big Science Event is a competition for primary school pupils which encourages them to have fun with science while learning about the experimental process at the same time. Class groups are challenged to create their own science experiment or investigation and present their findings to a panel of judges. Pupils have free range to choose their topic. Previous entries have included What makes snails move? and How much air does it take to pop a banana? We are always surprised by the topics and the ingenuity of the experiments that children come up with. Pupils work in small teams on the science investigation of their choice which can form part of a school science week, science club, science lesson or even a homework project.

The annual event was created by Science Oxford 10 years ago and this year included 12,000 pupils from 91 schools across Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Registration for the 2020 event is open until 19^thJanuary. Please register your school via the online form here scienceoxford.com/big-science-event.

We ask teams to complete their investigations by Easter and for each school to submit a winning team for our judges to visit. The judges then have the tricky job of deciding which teams to invite to the final. The competition culminates in an exciting Finals Day in the summer where pupils present their projects as part of a day of interactive science activities at our Science Oxford Centre at Stansfeld Park.

Thank you, Playforce. Your support helps us reach thousands of primary-aged children and hundreds of schools every year and get them involved in the Big Science Event.