Chloe Kwan

We are born scientists.

Yet the education system doesn't allow children to see themselves in science or in the lab in any shape or form, especially in primary school.

In fact, research from the University of New England shows that 78% of year 10 students said that they prefer secondary school science to primary school science, often because it's an actual subject which you can fully learn, study, and understand.

treated with equal importance to English and maths.

Picture primary school science.

For many people, I'm sure they can't.

Even for me, when primary school was only four years ago, I remember much more about basically every other subject.

And even then, science only consisted of little household experiments with easy-to-get materials like shaving cream and water.

The Education Matters magazine, a highly reliable news source for decision makers in the education system, says that resourcing is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to teaching science in primary schools.

Many schools have limited stocks of science equipment, so teachers constantly make do.

Reused cups become beakers and plastic plates become petri dishes.

I have personal experience with this lack of resources.

I can clearly remember in kindergarten when all 30 children were wrapped around a jar of food coloring and shaving cream.

And whilst I would love to tell you what we were learning, I don't remember.

What I can tell you though, this experiment was not performed in a lab.

The amount of water was not measured, the amount of shaving cream was not measured, and the amount of food coloring was not measured.

Not that we even had a measuring cylinder in the school anyways.

Let's just say I remained uninterested, confused, and even if I had asked to see it again, I couldn't.

We didn't have the resources to do it again.

The same bottle of cream and the same food coloring was shared between all five kindy classes.