Next steps

The Vision is ambitious. Publishing the report is the end of phase one. The Royal Society’s next steps will be to work with others in the next year to create a blueprint for change for the long term.

• We will continue to communicate our Vision widely and to listen to how we might take forward our recommendations. Our sister academies - the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the professional and learned bodies across science, mathematics and engineering – will continue to be central to our discussions as will others involved with science and mathematics education and more widely across other subjects. Together we will identify the barriers to achieving the Vision, whether in terms of policy or in terms of cultures, structures and systems in schools and colleges.
• In the autumn, we will hold a number of roundtable discussions to identify partners and to discuss how we might together work to implement our recommendations.
• We will continue to engage with parliamentarians from all four nations, and will also run events to communicate our Vision at all three party conferences this autumn.
• Through our sister society in Scotland, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, we will be holding an autumn workshop with key policymakers and others to determine how best the principles of our Vision can be implemented within the independent Scottish system of education. We hope to have similar exercises with Northern Ireland and Wales.

A particular programme we’d like to explore is how to bring science and mathematics teachers out of school and into the community to work with Science Centres across the UK. We want to encourage teachers to communicate their enthusiasm and expertise to their local communities.

We also will be talking to our sister academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and their partners, such as Engineering UK to ensure that we anchor much more firmly in the curriculum how science and mathematics works in real life.

Please contact us if you wish to learn more about the Vision or want to participate in taking it forward. Email: vision@royalsociety.org