Helping a national STEM charity reach more schools with a new digital platform for their flagship award scheme.
In 2017, Surrigo worked on a nine-month project with the British Science Association to develop Digital CREST awards, a core component of the BSA’s programme for young people. This scheme recognises and rewards students’ project work in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Each year, around a third of UK schools take part and over 30,000 11 to 18-year-olds get a CREST Award.
External evaluation shows that CREST experiences lead to more positive attitudes towards science and science careers. As a consequence of this success, the BSA wanted to expand access to CREST, allowing many more students to benefit. However, paper-based processes and dated IT systems were limiting growth and required significant updating. This project, therefore, was set up in order to develop automated processes and self-service elements in order to enable wider participation while also keeping entry fees low. Easier access reduces barriers to participation for students and teachers, which is particularly important for under-served communities with limited access to existing quality STEM enrichment activity.
In order to achieve this, Surrigo worked with the the BSA Education team to deliver:
● A self-service submission process enabling students and teachers to submit CREST projects online
● The development of new business processes to support a change in strategy
● An online recruitment and training process for project assessors
● The transition from the current project submission to the new online version
● The development of a reporting database. This collated data from both legacy systems and new digital platforms for reporting and analysis
Surrigo’s role in this exciting development was mainly:
● The programme management of multiple projects to support the change in business strategy
● Supporting the technical consultant with the briefing and managing of multiple suppliers
● The management of communication and reporting across the different project teams
● Identifying and resolving blockers and encouraging the team to work together to find solutions
● Providing guidance and training of project management to new members of the team
● The tracking of project spend against agreed budgets
Thanks to Surrigo’s work, Digital Crest is now a central part of the Crest Awards programme, with a target of 60,000 students a year accessing the awards online and greatly increasing the reach of this excellent programme.