STEAM 2024 - 10,000 students, 1000 teachers, 60 industry partners, 300 student volunteers and over 100 adult volunteers.

Why we host the UK's largest Partnerships event at Thorpe Park:

Let's travel back in time to 2009 when I took on the new role as 'Head of Science' at Sevenoaks School. I had been a head of department for D&T for over a decade and had just moved into a position leading the Physics, Chemistry, Biology, D&T, Computing and Sports Science subject disciplines.

Over the years I had got to know local schools quite well. My staff and I regularly offered summer schools, twilight sessions for teachers and shared our resources with friends and colleagues from the area. We got to know that whilst the teachers were amazing, our local state primary schools didn't have labs, subject specialists or the resources to really explore the STEM subjects to their full capacity.

A few years later I was working with the 'Sevenoaks Primary Partnership' which was made up of 30+ schools and coordinated by the amazing Helen Jones . I was spending time as the 'Director of Innovation and Outreach' regularly with local Headteachers. Through these wonderful relationships we were able to look at trends in education, and put valuable resources together to enhance the education of all students across the group.

I decided I wanted to do something special for both our students and for the schools we worked with, so we announced our first 'Science Week'. This was hosted on our school campus, across a week. We had a budget of ￡2000 for the whole thing!

We worked with parents who ran various companies, found sponsorship from the LEGO Group and the Royal Society of Physics and we ran an event with the London Science Museum, alongside a few extra bits and pieces from the likes of Cyberstein Robotics Ltd. and Titan the robot. We ended up having 4000 local students join us for the event, as well as our 1000+ students.

Our waiting list for the event was in the thousands, so in 2010 we upscaled and offered 10,000 places. Still with a budget of ￡2000. We again filled the places with ease and still had a waiting list, so in 2011 we scaled again to 12,000 places. For 2011 we decided to push the boundaries a little and host a live link with the International Space Station, in Partnership with NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration .

This event went out live to 1.6 Million people on NASA TV. We had a theatre full of students and we knew of 13 other schools watching live online in their theatres remotely. Our 2011 event went viral and we found ourselves with quite a few larger sponsors for 2012. I also got the opportunity to work with NASA as their 'teaching from space' UK liaison and had fun working with Blue Peter on various projects.

In 2012 we hosted 15,000 children across the week. Our event included traction engines, air displays above the town, Merlin engines and of course a full size Spitfire in the school main carpark for the parents to drive around at drop off. We still had a waiting list though!

As the years went by we hosted more and more elaborate activities which included a special effects day (including the actual car from Back to the Future), chainsaw ice sculpting, indoor fireworks with Matthew Tosh , The Bloodhound Supersonic car, inflatable star gazing domes and 40 or 50 other inspiring activities.

Each and every year we scaled up, welcoming funding and sponsorship from large organisations. We became the first regional 'Big Bang' fair and set a standard for other schools to also receive similar funding to run Science Week projects. By 2018 we still had a budget of ￡2000, but we were spending on average ￡100K or more on our events thanks to the generosity of others.

In 2019 I moved schools to take on the role as Director of Partnerships at ACS International Schools . Of course I wanted to continue offering the events that had been so successful for almost a decade. I wrote to over 200 companies who had resource that would enable us to run a large event, and I made the decision to see if we could do the full 10,000 on one day, inviting all the amazing shows, activities and resources I had used over the last 10 years.

Thorpe Park was the first to come back to me and invite me in for a chat about my plans. To this day I'm not sure they realised what I had planned for the event, but they kindly agreed to let me use their facility.

We announced this wonderful event just before the pandemic struck in 2019, and were forced to postpone 3 years in a row due to restrictions in place to protect our community, but in 2022 we got the chance to go ahead.

Our 2022 event was brilliant and included helicopters, supersonic cars and lots of partners I had wonderful relationships with from past events. This one off event turned out to be very powerful for a number of reasons.

1. It enabled our students to work on the project, enhancing their future workplace skills through, social media, marketing, photography, video and logistics teams.
2. We were able to satisfy the requirements of the Ofsted inspections that many schools were struggling to cover (Computing and Science).
3. It brought together our community of schools in a way that we were not expecting and increased our number of local partner schools.
4. The economy of scale in running such a large event drew the attention of many companies and industry leaders, who volunteered to support us.
5. We gamified the education element to ensure that the event was based on the National Curriculum and that teachers could use it as evidence against learning objectives.

Needless to say, that this event was so well received (it even won awards) that the trustees and leadership team at ACS decided to do it again in 2024.

I was very aware that the majority of the planning for the 2022 event was done after work, weekends and holidays for me and I was also mindful that my team 'sold their souls' to their roles for around a month, as well as committing to help me with all the manual labour of erecting 60 gazebos, tables, chairs etc. If we were to do it again, we would need some help.

This is where the phenomenal Jen Baguley came in. We advertised for an 'Events Manager', looking for someone to help us with Thorpe Park and all our other big events throughout the year. Jen took the mantle and hit the ground running. I passed on whatever I could from the first event, and she dedicated her time to replicating the event, with the addition of all the improvements she made along the way - based on our experience the first time around and her extensive background in events management.

And so ... STEAM 2024 was born. Jen Baguley worked hard to put together a team of hundreds of individuals across our community (Students, Parents, Teachers, Gardeners, Estates staff, Parents Associations, industry, charities, universities etc) and our Partnerships team ( Jane Quelch , Rosie Peskett , Robyne Simpson and Karen Ayerst) stepped up to the mark once more.

We hosted 10,000 children on one day, for a second time, on the 15th October.

If you would like to see images from the day we have a 'Drop Event' webpage open, where everyone is dropping their photos and video content. Take a look:

STEAM 2024 - DropEvent (Photo's of this years event)

Call to Action

As you can see, we have over a decades experience in running large STEAM related events. Each and every event is ambitious and challenging, but every one a success.

We have hundreds of partner organisations that join forces with us for free on the day, but as you can imagine, each and every year requires some sponsorship to enable us to offer such a wonderful resource to our state school partners and to our students too.

I would love to hear from any companies that would like to either sponsor small parts of our day or industry leaders that would like to be key sponsors, or an exclusive headline sponsor.

All donations are spent on the event itself, as staffing and logistics come from my team.

We are keen to go again in 2025 - so if you would like to be a part of it, then please do get in touch on [email protected]

So ... In Conclusion

The importance of hosting events like this cannot be overstated. These experiences go far beyond the excitement of the day—they provide a platform for young people to develop essential workplace skills, from problem-solving to communication, while building connections between industry and education that will last a lifetime.

By bringing together educators, businesses, and students, we help to create a bridge between learning and real-world application. The partnerships we foster today are the networks that will empower tomorrow’s workforce.

As always I would also be very happy to chat to any representatives from the Labour government about the power of school partnerships, and discuss how we think we could genuinely make a difference to education in this country - for all children!

Together, we are equipping the next generation with the skills, confidence, and opportunities they need to thrive in an ever-evolving world.

Independent Schools Council HMC (The Heads' Conference) ISA Heads The Institute of Development Professionals in Education (IDPE) School Partnerships Alliance (S.P.A.) Tim Cagney #STEAM #Education #Industry Mark Wilson Rob Crowther Martin Hall Julie Robinson Jim Knight Alex Bell FRSA FCCT FICRS FIoL FLS Melissa Di Donato