Director: Dr Lynne Bianchi, Director of the Sheffield Comino Centre, Centre for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University, Howard Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB Phone: 0114 225 4870 Fax: 0114 225 4872 l.m.bianchi@shu.ac.uk

The Sheffield Comino Centre is based in The Centre for Science Education (CSE), which is part of the Faculty of Development and Society at Sheffield Hallam University, and is managed as a full cost unit with an annual turnover of over £2.00 million and a staff of over 20. All income is from contracts with external organisations. The CSE is one of the UK’s leading Science centres, managing national and international research and development projects, aimed at developing the scientific and personal capability of young people.

Sheffield Comino Centre resides within the CSE, and seeks to complement the ethos of developing young people’s personal responsibility through active engagement in science education.

Established in 1990, Sheffield Comino Centre worked to promote the use of the GRASP Comino Approach in projects that the CSE engaged with. This enabled us to explore different perspectives with partners from a vast range of fields, including research councils, curriculum authorities, industry, schools and the University itself. In the early years, Sheffield Comino Centre was associated with projects such as Problem Solving with Industry, which still has currency in the market of Enterprise Education today. A project to develop curriculum based, environment materials for teachers called Climate Futures was competed with the Comino Foundation in 2008.

As the CSE evolved and established itself as a leading force in innovative curriculum development and consultancy, Sheffield Comino Centre continued to focus thinking and practice on developing youngsters’ scientific and personal capabilities. In this way the philosophy of both Centre’s was in harmony, and remains so. We work across the education sector with a key focus on promoting and encouraging the development of skills and capabilities required for success academically, socially and personally through active teaching, learning and assessment opportunities. Recently CSE launched the STEM Leaders Qualification (access details) through EdExcel at BTEC levels 1 or 2 for 11 - 16 year olds. The development of the new qualification was sponsored by the Comino Foundation.

Currently, The Sheffield Comino seeks to support the work of the CSE by providing ‘dream time’ – time for staff to have the space to innovate, network and make new connections in the world of Science Education and beyond. It acts as a driving force to enable new vision and dynamic growth with large networks of people. We strive to maintain the promotion of the GRASP Comino Approach through publications for young people, such as our latest ‘Get it Done – a student guide to managing projects’; whilst broadening the ethos of the Comino Foundation, through aspiring to develop young people’s personal responsibility, through the Pupil Researcher Initiative (insert hyperlink to web address), Personal Capabilities Programme (insert hyperlink to web address), INSPIRE clubs (insert hyperlink to web address), Reflective Partners Initiative and many more projects.

We are interested in hearing from groups or individuals who are also seeking to promote personal responsibility through school, college or university based initiatives, and those who innovate through curriculum development in Science Education.