BP Educational Service

The challenge

The BP Educational Service (BPES) is BP's flagship community investment programme. EdComs was appointed in 2005 to redevelop the programme to ensure that it genuinely meets schools' needs and maximises participation and involvement. This was achieved through the creation of high-quality teaching materials, founded on thorough research and consultation with teachers and students.

Our approach

EdComs has created a range of new resources for schools, based on a sophisticated and continuous process of research and consultation with teachers. Highlights include:

  • a substantial website where schools can view, download and order resources
  • new interactive, film and print resources, such as the Carbon Footprint Toolkit (CFT), the Enterprise Trading Game and the Young Science Investigators (YSI) series for primary schools. The CFT has been requested by more than 70% of secondary schools.

The programme has kept pace with trends in the use of online interactive educational resources. It also demonstrates a significant commitment to face-to-face delivery, through the Enterprising Science roadshows and teacher continuing professional development.

EdComs Research and Consultancy worked to identify students' awareness of carbon reduction, monitoring levels of student and teacher engagement, identifying learning outcomes and intended actions of students, teachers and the school after the completion of the session. This activity included a range of focus groups, usability work, questionnaires, case study visits and telephone interviews.

Outcomes

The BP Educational Service is now the leading sponsored science and engineering programme for schools. Across all schools that requested BPES resources during 2008, it is estimated that BP resources:

  • have been used by more than 400,000 students
  • have more than 16,000 teacher registrations for the education website.

Overall, the majority of teachers found the resources:

  • reliable (92%)
  • curriculum-relevant (97%)
  • good quality (96%)
  • easy to use (95%)
  • suitable for frequent use (93%)
  • easy to plan, prepare and deliver in lessons (89%).