National Scientific Thinking Challenge

In 2021 in the middle of the pandemic, a group of friends working as academics in Chemistry departments in 6 different universities (Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Southampton, Oxford and Warwick) created an online test. The test was designed to encourage students to try something positive and enjoyable that allowed them to demonstrate their scientific thinking skills, that even they may not know they had. Over 1,600 students took the test in 2021 which has grown to almost 4,500 this year so we are aiming to run it again in 2023!

The test is free and we aim to make it as inclusive as possible, by inviting all types of schools in the UK to take part. The National Scientific Thinking Challenge (NSTC) is open to as many schools as want to enter their pupils. The entire system, administered by the University of Warwick, is anonymous as far as the pupils go and we will never know their names. All students will take the challenge at your school at the same time and this needs to be sometime within the last week of April. We trust you to run the test fairly and we have provision to allow you to allow pupils additional time if required.

We do not rank schools in our results, only the marks of individual students, who remain anonymous throughout (although your school will retain a list of pupil codes to allow you to see your individual pupils’ results). We will create a distribution curve of marks of all students from schools in one population, and we will work out thresholds for the top 10%, 20% and 40%. We will also provide printable Gold, Silver, Bronze certificates for your pupils, so they can celebrate their success amongst pupils from a wide—range of demographics across the UK.

We have a demonstration paper and a full past paper that you can view and go through with your pupils in advance.

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