The Member of Parliament for Winchester spoke in a Westminster Hall debate on science and discovery centres. The aim of this debate was to highlight the importance of science centres in educating school children in STEM subjects.
Steve Brine’s constituency covers Winchester Science Centre, previously INTECH, which has been focussing on education 5-12 year olds since 1986, giving almost 4000 children the opportunity to have informal science activates in the past year, that they may not have had the opportunity without.
Winchester Science Centre has lobbied Steve Brine for more support as the charity has not been elidable for any of the Government grants/funds from the past year, including the Cultural Recovery Fund which was benefitted by many iconic Winchester locations.
Speaking in the debate, Steve looked forwards, beyond covid saying; “The future, well it should be very positive, it should be strong. We haven’t come this far to go down now and I know the team led by the excellent Ben Ward, at Winchester, are determined to kick on from covid and come back stronger
“The truth is, whatever the restrictions say, the school trips are not coming back anytime soon – possibly not even come September no matter my view on the over-caution that would represent.
“So I would like the Minister, when she sums up, and colleagues across Government at DFE - to make the positive case for school trips later this year and to give school leaders the confidence to get back out there
“As we’ve heard today, and will further I’m sure, Science Centres will benefit from that because their main customer base is back but the country benefits from that because of their obvious support for education in science and careers in the STEM subjects and boy have the last 12 months shown how we need them.”
Winchester Science Centre plans to reopen on Saturday 22nd May.
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