Regional Resources
Renaissance South East is supporting museums to develop services to schools across the region in a number of ways.
Schools4Museums
The database has been developed to identify schools that are currently using museums and those that do not. It will give an insight into the regional picture as well as enable those museums who submitted data to understand which of their local schools are not visiting them or using their services. This project has been funded by the South East Hub and MLA South East and managed by MLA South East.
The MLA South East website for Schools4Museums.
The summary report for phase two of the South East Schools Database Project is now available on
the MLA South East website. It confirms that 74% of the South East's Primary and Secondary schools
took part in some form of museum-related learning between 2004 and 2006, a total of 2,400 state
schools. Levels of participation vary considerably across the region, with the highest levels of
Primary school participation involving the Isle of Wight, Brighton and Hove, Oxfordshire, Medway
and Hampshire.
SAM Culture (Sussex Arts Marketing) is about to start collecting data for the 2006-07
academic year from all museums in the South East. We are hoping that it will be possible for most
museums to provide their data online and that an increasing number will take advantage of the free
online bookings system. The report, online data entry system and the booking system are available
at:
http://www.mlasoutheast.org.uk/museums/schools4museum.
Good Practice Guides
- ABC of Working with Schools has examples of good practice, support and advice for museums working with school-age children.
- Making the Most of Museums demonstrates the wealth of good practice in museums across the South East of England and offers guidance to teachers wishing to use museum services.
- is aimed at museum staff and volunteers who want to begin to develop services to schools
- will also be of use to more experienced museum staff or volunteers who want to develop something new
- provides background information, examples of good practice and signposts to websites for further information
- has pages about:
- learning in museums and schools
- what is happening in schools today e.g. the National Curriculum
- how to go about developing services for schools
- how to develop services which include everyone
- how to prepare for a school visit
- provision of out of school activities for children.
Each page is backed up by downloads and references to useful websites for more information.
- will help teachers and student teachers to realise the potential of museums to support a wide range of curriculum subjects
- will aim to support newly qualified teachers in planning a visit to a museum
- demonstrates the benefits for teachers and pupils in working with museums.
Science Links in Museum Education (SLIME) South East
SLIME is a group of people with expertise, and/or interest, in developing and promoting Science in Museums. A training day FUNdamental Science was held at the River and Rowing Museum, Henley on 11th January 2007. To find out more about SLIME and to download notes and resources from the training day go the the page about Science in this section.