Students at Kingsgrove North High School are getting a taste of scientific careers through two programs that match teenagers with working scientists.

The school’s science head teacher, Robyn Ellis, says the programs – which include a global program run through the University of New South Wales – are broadening the career outlook of students.

“The programs have increased the students’ interest in science because they realise there is more to science,” Ms Ellis says. “They find there are other areas they can explore and they come back and tell the other students.”

Since 2005 students have participated in the UNSW’s Worldwide Day in Science, a project which now involves students and scientists around the globe.

Participating students “shadow” working scientists and university science students on a target date in April, documenting their observations in reports posted on the project’s website that acts as an online career guide.

Kingsgrove North High principal Helen Wyatt says the work the students are expected to report on ranges from university science student experiments in a laboratory to spending a day with an ophthalmologist, or a zoologist at Taronga Zoo.

“The students get to see what goes on during a day in [the scientist’s] life,” Ms Wyatt says. “They see all the day-to-day tasks such as administration and paper work that the scientists deal with, as well as the more glamorous aspect of their work.”

So far five Year 10 and 11 students from Kingsgrove North High, identified as gifted and talented, have participated in the program. Two of the students went on to study medical science at UNSW. Younger students are also gaining exposure to science careers education through Kingsgrove North High School’s participation in the Federal Government’s Scientists in Schools program.

The initiative encourages schools to become buddies with a scientist who works with and mentors high achieving students who can participate in field trips and laboratory experiments with the scientist.

Ms Ellis says the school recently linked up with Andrea Leigh, lecturer in environmental sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney.

“We’d like to target Year 9 and 10 with this program and promote science at an earlier age,” she says. “Again, it’s about broadening students’ outlook on what’s involved, rather than having them listen to a person in a white coat talk about a program.”

The programs highlight what Ms Wyatt says is the “strong science focus” at Kingsgrove North High. For a number of years the school’s transition to high school program has involved science teachers running classes for Stage 3 students in partner primary schools.

A state of the art science laboratory with wireless ICT capability was built during a 2004 refurbishment of the school. The education minister, John Della Bosca, announced funding last year to upgrade the other science labs.

Ms Wyatt says the improved facilities had given the school the “impetus to encourage kids to take on science”.

“It’s also encouraged staff to push the envelope with teaching and learning,” she says.

“We try to take the Quality Teaching documents and make them live in our school through making real connections between science and the outside world.”