Outreach at 50
Celebrating 50 years of schools outreach at Imperial
Outreach
at 50
Celebrating 50 years
of schools outreach
at Imperial
The Pimlico
Connection
Interviews and design by Ellie Cawthera and
portrait photography by Jason Alden
Imperial College London launched its first outreach programme in 1975 - a novel and ground-breaking tutoring scheme for local schools called the Pimlico Connection. Believed to be the first of its kind in the UK, the programme is now run by Imperial’s Outreach team and continues to support pupils to this day. The initiative sparked Imperial’s longstanding commitment to helping young people realise their aspirations regardless of background. In addition, the Pimlico Connection marks the first in a wide-ranging suite of outreach activity that has impacted approximately 200,000 young people.
Over the last 50 years, Imperial has continued to launch innovative outreach initiatives in collaboration with charities, schools, academics and students. Thanks to the generosity and dedication of the Imperial community and its partners, the university has become a pioneer in schools outreach. It has led the way by establishing specialist facilities on its campuses and developing online interactive programmes to engage young people of all ages both locally and beyond.
The Outreach at 50 special interview series honours the 50th anniversary of Imperial’s outreach activity by sharing the remarkable stories of those who have been impacted by our programmes as well as those who have made them possible.
Here, we explore the initiative that started it all - the Pimlico Connection – with interviews from Professor Sinclair Goodlad, the academic who launched the programme, and Dr Jenny Cook who runs the scheme today. We also speak to alumni who volunteered as mentors during their student days and a mentee from 2001 who was inspired to join Imperial by his Pimlico Connection mentor.
Imperial students in 1975 tutoring in the local Pimlico School.
Imperial students in 1975 tutoring in the local Pimlico School.
Professor Sinclair Goodlad and Dr Jenny Cooke
“Teacher-pupil ratios in schools do not permit the sort of individual attention to pupils which is desirable in subjects like science and mathematics and which certain disadvantaged pupils urgently require.”
In 1974, Professor Sinclair Goodlad, an academic at Imperial, wrote a proposal for a student tutoring scheme. He wrote of the need to improve education in science and maths and the need for more teachers. His proposal would lead to the Pimlico Connection, the first organised schools outreach activity in the UK and the initiative that kick-started a wave of student mentoring that continues to this day. To date, approximately 3,500 student tutors have mentored 33,000 pupils across 70 schools through the Pimlico Connection.
The 86-year-old's background in electrical engineering has taken him around the globe, including as a lecturer at Delhi University and MIT, but a glance at his overflowing bookcase reveals that this is not what he’ll be remembered for. Books on the teaching and learning of science and mathematics line the shelves - most of them authored by him.
The idea of a university engaging with schools was a novel one in the 1970s. The word ‘outreach’ didn’t exist in that context, and archived meeting notes and newsletter cut outs show various attempts by Sinclair to explain the concept - “the idea is not to do teachers out of their jobs” reads one. Instead, he explains, the aim was to address needs within education by “enriching the pupils’ learning with a massive injection of one-to-one tutoring.” Another key aim was to encourage more university students to consider teaching as a career.
A snip from Sinclair's 1974 proposal for the yet-to-be-named Pimlico Connection.
A snip from Sinclair's 1974 proposal for the yet-to-be-named Pimlico Connection.
Sinclair drew inspiration from examples of mentoring schemes he’d seen outside the UK – “known in developing countries as ‘Each One Teach One’, and in the USA as ‘Youth Tutoring Youth’” - and sought to set up a similar project at Imperial.
“We called it the Pimlico Connection because we were going to be working with the Pimlico School in London. But it’s also the name of two films put together that were popular at the time.” says Sinclair. “One is Passport to Pimlico,” - a comedy about the residents of the south-west London neighbourhood declaring independence - “and the other is The French Connection. We thought it might be a good way to get people's attention and draw them in.”
A clipping of a student newsletter advert from 1979 looking for Imperial students to volunteer for the Pimlico Connection
A clipping of a student newsletter advert from 1979 looking for Imperial students to volunteer for the Pimlico Connection
The Pimlico Connection launched in 1975 with Imperial students visiting Pimlico Comprehensive School once a week to help in science classes and arrange visits to the Science Museum and Imperial’s laboratories. Now known as the Pimlico Academy, Imperial still has close links with the school.
Sinclair went on to publish research on the impact of the Pimlico Connection with a 1986 report stating that 600 tutors had given nearly 15,000 hours of mentoring to over 7,000 pupils. He found that pupils, teachers and mentor alike benefited and established the scheme as a strong conduit towards a career in teaching.
An excerpt of a 1986 report on the Pimlico Connection
An excerpt of a 1986 report on the Pimlico Connection
The Pimlico Connection quickly gained momentum, becoming an official student society in 1980. In the 1990s it secured sponsorship from BP, and other institutions began to launch their own mentoring schemes inspired by the Pimlico Connection. Numbers expanded rapidly, going from just 6 to 63 institutions between 1990 and 1992, including the University of Cambridge, Warwick University and University College London, among others. By the late 1990s, the Pimlico Connection was a key component of the Imperial's initiatives to “attract the best students irrespective of their backgrounds” and it inspired the creation of Imperial's own teacher-training programme in 2002 called INSPIRE.
One of many books authored by Sinclair on the subject of student tutoring
One of many books authored by Sinclair on the subject of student tutoring
The Pimlico Connection today
Today the scheme is quite different, though the concept is still the same with Imperial students mentoring school pupils from underrepresented backgrounds. It is run by Dr Jenny Cooke in Imperial’s Outreach team. “We work in lots of different schools now. The biggest changes came with the pandemic - lockdown measures meant our students had to provide the tutoring online but we found this worked really well. It allowed us to expand beyond London schools, so we’ve continued this format and now the Pimlico Connection is nation-wide.”
Demand is high amongst schools to be part of the Pimlico Connection. They apply and the Outreach team choose participating schools based on where the need is greatest. To date, over 70 schools have been part of the programme.
“Another big change we've made is paying the student mentors. Previously it was all voluntary, but we wanted to ensure that the opportunity to be part of the programme was equally accessible to students from all backgrounds. Mentors can be really inspiring for school students if they have relatable role models, and this is especially important when working with disadvantaged communities. Now that we offer payment, we see a lot more diversity amongst the mentors. It means that students who would usually have to find part-time work alongside their studies are able to do this whilst supporting their living costs.”
The opportunity is open to all students as part of the Student Ambassador scheme. As well as working on the Pimlico Connection, Student Ambassadors can support any of the Outreach team's programmes. Over the last 50 years, around 33,000 pupils have been tutored by Imperial students through the Pimlico Connection, with other universities inspired by the initiative following suit.
Dr Jad Marrouche
I would not have conventionally gone to university, but the Pimlico Connection is one of the reasons I chose to go to Imperial to study Physics.”
Dr Jad Marrouche was doing his A-levels at Holland Park School, London in the early 2000s when an Imperial student named Alex started visiting his class through the Pimlico Connection. Alex inspired Jad to study Physics at Imperial where he, in turn, volunteered as a tutor on the Pimlico Connection. His academic achievements led to a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics, followed by a prestigious Research Fellowship at CERN where he played a key role in searches for supersymmetry and the discovery of the Higgs boson - one of the biggest scientific discoveries of all time. Jad has since left research and founded his own software company and he attributes much of his career to his Pimlico Connection mentor who he is still in touch with today.
“Holland Park School was a tough environment then. I feel lucky to have left with a university offer. Having someone like Alex made a huge difference. He came every Wednesday giving up a few hours of his time to help us with what we were working on. It opened my eyes to life outside my own world which felt very small - school and home was all I knew.
“It worked like a forum - we could speak freely and ask questions that you wouldn't be able to ask your teachers. Our teachers knew what was on the syllabus but wouldn’t necessarily be up to date with the latest physics research. Because Alex was a Physics student at Imperial, there was an opportunity to go beyond the syllabus, to talk about things that weren't on the curriculum, things that were interesting to understand. We could find out how they worked and go down some rabbit holes.”
Alex encouraged Jad and his peers to enter a competition run by the Institute of Physics. “We had to explain a physics concept in layman's terms and Alex came with us to the competition even though it wasn’t on a Wednesday afternoon. That really stuck with me.
“I would not have conventionally gone to university, but the Pimlico Connection is the main reason I chose to go to Imperial to study Physics.”
As a student at Imperial, Jad received numerous accolades. He was top of his class every year and was elected President of the Royal College of Science Union (RCSU).
I got into Imperial on merit. Sometimes diversity gets misunderstood as selecting people simply because they’re from a different background.
"I got into Imperial on merit. Sometimes diversity gets misunderstood as selecting people simply because they’re from a different background. I was very lucky that I had the opportunity to get into Imperial and overcome the hurdles I faced. I got a bursary too which really helped.
“I did lots of outreach volunteering as a way to give back - I did the summer schools, gave talks in schools and I did loads at CERN too. But the Science Challenge is probably the biggest legacy that we created.”
As a former President of the RCSU Jad's name is engraved on a students' union tankard.
As a former President of the RCSU Jad's name is engraved on a students' union tankard.
You can't win them all but you have to try. You have to keep trying."
The Science Challenge is a science communication competition run by the RCSU that continues to this day. “We founded it in 2007 when I was President to commemorate the centenary of the College. We had an Imperial category and a schools category, and we received hundreds of entries from schools so I’m very proud of that.”
Thanks to sponsorship, the competition prizes were impressive. They included MacBooks and a chance to shadow the Telegraph’s Science Editor as well as large cash prizes. The judges were impressive too. They included notable Imperial alumni such as author Simon Singh (who was also a President of the RCSU) and in later years BBC News Science Correspondent Pallab Ghosh. Lord Robert Winston has been involved too, judging the overall winner of the competition since its inception.
Clipping from the student newspaper Felix from 16 March 2007 showing "King Jad" celebrating the first RCSU Science Challenge.
Clipping from the student newspaper Felix from 16 March 2007 showing "King Jad" celebrating the first RCSU Science Challenge.
Jad launched the Science Challenge in his 4th year of study but the first volunteering he did was the Pimlico Connection. “I wanted to give back. I was mentoring in a school called St George’s. It had a permanent police presence at the entrance to the school because tragically the head teacher had been murdered there a few years prior. It felt familiar to the school I went to, so I felt at home and felt like I could make a difference there because I understood the environment.
“It was hard because from the lens of the volunteer coming to the school, you want to help young people who are from a similar background to yourself. You want them to do well and break through it, but it's not always possible. So you have to do your best and, as the phrase goes, you can take the horse to the water, but you can't force it to drink.
“A lot of the volunteering was frustrating because you put a lot of energy in to try to help and motivate but it's not matched by everybody. It can be sad; you think 'you'll regret this, but you don't know that you're gonna regret this'. Not many people understand the opportunity they've been given. But then you get ones that do and that's where you can put your energy in and really go for it explaining concepts. And you can see that there's some positive feedback. You can see they’re understanding, and they’re excited by it. You can't win them all, but you have to try. You have to keep trying.
“You lose your soul if you're not allowed to be inquisitive, if you're not allowed to explore. That’s what the Pimlico Connection allowed you see. It allowed you to think about things that you've never thought about before and talk about it in a safe space with somebody who knows what they're talking about because they’re from a world-class research institute. I think the value is tremendous.”
Dr Claire Doyle
Shortly after becoming a teacher, Claire invited Imperial to bring Spectroscopy in Suitcase to her school
Shortly after becoming a teacher, Claire invited Imperial to bring Spectroscopy in Suitcase to her school
Dr Claire Doyle was the first of her family to go to university and during her Chemistry degree between 2002-2007, she volunteered as part of the Pimlico Connection providing mentorship and support to local schools. She then went on to do a PhD and worked in the Outreach team before becoming a teacher. Claire did her teacher training at Imperial as part of a programme called the Innovative Scheme for Postgraduates In Research and Education - or INSPIRE. Now she is a science teacher at William Perkin CofE High School in West London.
“I enjoyed chemistry at school - I had a great teacher who really inspired me,” says Claire. “I joined the Pimlico Connection in my third year working with a primary school in Notting Hill which was really diverse. It was the first time I'd worked with students with English as an additional language so I mostly helped them with their reading and a little bit with maths and science. Through being part of the Pimlico Connection, I heard about other outreach opportunities so I started supporting school visits and got more involved with the summer schools but it was the practical work I enjoyed most – that's what really brings your subject to life.”
We got to deliver lessons and do things I'd seen my teachers do which was an amazing experience - terrifying at the time, but amazing. That was what made me think teaching is something I'm interested in.”
Claire joined the Student Ambassador Scheme where she was paid to work in a secondary school for two weeks. “That was the first experience I had in a secondary school. We got to deliver lessons and do things I'd seen my teachers do which was an amazing experience - terrifying at the time, but amazing. That was what made me think teaching is something I'm interested in.”
But after her 5-year undergraduate degree, Claire didn’t go straight into teaching. “There was just always this doubt at the back of my mind that I wasn't confident enough to be a teacher. And it's funny even now if I tell people I'm a teacher, they assume I'm a primary school teacher.”
Instead, Claire did a PhD in Chemistry and continued to volunteer with the Pimlico Connection and other outreach activities before joining the Outreach team as a staff member. In this role, she ran an a Royal Society of Chemistry initiative called Spectroscopy in a Suitcase which enabled schools to use advanced scientific equipment. That's when she came across the INSPIRE programme.
INSPIRE
The INSPIRE programme differed to traditional PGCEs thanks to subject experts and outreach specialists delivering some of the sessions. “It gave me a lot more confidence with practical work than other PGCEs would have. Practical work in a high school can be a nightmare. The kids love it, but it changes the whole dynamic of the classroom. It's quite terrifying from a safety perspective. However, INSPIRE made it a priority to ensure we felt confident running hands-on activities. We had a lot of practical training so we wouldn't shy away from it. Now, I even train other teachers at my school on how to run practicals as it’s an area many feel nervous about and receive little support in. When teachers aren't confident, they often resort to showing videos instead, and the students miss out on valuable experiences. COVID exacerbated this issue, as many trainee teachers during that time were learning online and missed out on the lab experience needed to feel confident delivering practical sessions.”
The INSPIRE programme trained 150 teachers from 2007 to 2020 when the difficult decision was made to end the programme due to the steady national decline in trainee teacher recruitment and this being further compounded by Brexit.
“I’ve always felt very lucky as a science teacher – it's a subject you can easily relate to everyday experience and you can bring it to life through practical work. It is great to see pupils grow and see what they choose for their GCSEs, for their A-levels and what they are thinking of doing in the future. It’s a real privilege to feel that you are even a tiny part in helping them with those decisions. There’s a lot of negativity in the press when it comes to teaching but I would recommend it to anyone. I reflect on where I am now and I don’t know if I’d be here if it wasn’t for the Pimlico Connection.
“The Pimlico Connection gave me my first opportunity to work in a school environment. As a secondary school teacher now, it is so important to have an understanding of the challenges students and teachers face in primary education, so my experiences allow me to be able to better relate to my Year 7 students as they begin their secondary school journey. I also really appreciate the support I received from the teachers I volunteered with as I know how busy they must have been and I therefore also try to make sure that I always support our early career teachers.”
Natasha Martineau
Natasha with a member of the Band of the Household Cavalry which opened the 2015 Imperial Festival
Natasha with a member of the Band of the Household Cavalry which opened the 2015 Imperial Festival
Natasha Martineau volunteered with the Pimlico Connection between 1993 and 1994 while pursuing her Master’s in Science Communication. Placed in Pimlico Primary School, she feels she learnt almost as much about communicating complex ideas in engaging ways from her time with the school as she did from her academic studies. It also left her with a lifelong enthusiasm and curiosity about the power of face to face engagement.
In 2008, she returned to Imperial as Head of Research Communications and played a pivotal role in transforming how the university shares its research, enabling Imperial to make a formal commitment to engaging wider public audiences. Notably, she spearheaded the launch of the Imperial Festival in 2012, an event that attracted thousands of visitors and has since evolved into the Great Exhibition Road Festival – the university’s flagship public engagement event. After 16 years at Imperial, Natasha now works as a coach to support researchers, academics and higher education professionals, and is setting up her own communications and engagement consultancy.
“We had three months to pull together the first festival. We’d never done anything like it before. We didn’t know if researchers would take part or if people would come. But hundreds of scientists got involved. And then 7,000 people came – I don’t think the university had ever had that many visitors!
“It showed us there was an appetite from researchers to share their science with wider audiences in imaginative ways. And the number of visitors who turned up showed us just how curious people are about what goes on at Imperial. They enjoyed it but importantly so did the researchers. Their feedback was that they appreciated the chance to discuss their work with the public and were proud to be part of an institution that opened its doors to the public. All this positive feedback led to support from senior leadership for an even bigger event the following year.”
But that support wasn’t always there. “Lots of Imperial scientists had been doing engagement and outreach for years but it mostly went under the radar and was seen as something to do in your spare time - it wasn’t encouraged. So we wanted to legitimise making your research accessible as part of your day job and one of the ways to do that is through public engagement events. That’s where the idea of the Imperial Festival was born.
“We had to work hard across the university to help people feel comfortable with having lots of people wandering onto campus. But ultimately, the concept fitted well with the ethos of Albertopolis, where organisations exist in an open way. Anyone can walk into the galleries and museums on Exhibition Road so it fits that they can do the same when they get to Imperial.”
The Pimlico Connection taught me about the privilege and importance of engaging face to face with people, understanding how to inspire them, challenge them, and learn together.
The Festival’s continued success led to secured funding which enabled the event to grow year on year, spilling over into Exhibition Road and seeing 50,000 annual visitors. It ignited a wave of enthusiasm for public engagement across the university. But Natasha’s journey with Imperial started years earlier. “Becoming the Head of Research Communications felt like all the stars aligned. It felt like coming home. I’d first visited Imperial aged seven. A friend’s dad was a chemical engineer and he used to come into school and do fascinating demonstrations. Then one day he invited us onto campus to see his computer. It filled up this huge room and he got it to tell each of us a joke. That really stuck with me.
“Partly because of that experience, I always thought I’d become a scientist. But somehow I got distracted by the excitement of talking about science rather than actually doing it, so I chose to do a Master’s in Science Communication. I wanted to feed my curiosity about the many brilliant science stories there are. And I wanted to tell them to people who weren’t scientists.
“When I started my master’s at Imperial, I saw an advert for the Pimlico Connection. I thought it sounded really interesting and relevant for life as a science communicator so I signed up. I was assigned my school and I remember cycling off to Pimlico. I met the teacher and the class - a Year 2 class - and the teacher pretty much said, ‘good, you’re here – I'll be in the staff room’. Suddenly I was alone, in charge of 30 kids, trying to do science, without ever having worked in a school. All I had was a lot of energy, enthusiasm and a curiosity about how children learn. Thankfully you wouldn’t get away with that now!
“So, every Wednesday I would set off with a bunch of stuff in my bicycle basket that was nothing much to do with my master’s and everything to do with trying to inspire kids with the fun of science. I learnt a lot – not just about crowd-control but about how to ask open questions and create an environment where people are curious. We did all sorts of activities – we collected plants, did experiments on soil. And at the end of one session a boy came up to me and said ‘I love your cooking lessons’. I’m not sure if his feedback about my experiments was a massive fail or a huge success!
“Either way, it taught me that people see things through their own lens and you have to either preempt how things can be misinterpreted or be prepared to explore the unexpected. There are just so many ways of having interesting conversations where both sides learn and kids’ unbridled curiosity can come through.
“For me, the Pimlico Connection planted this idea that when you're communicating directly with people in front of you – in a classroom or at a festival - you can see how they’re responding and have those conversations in real time. It's more time-consuming and expensive than writing an article, but there is something about the substance of your engagement that is so deep and interesting and exciting. Everybody learns something. Everyone comes away richer.
Natasha's daughter Edie doing experiments at home.
Natasha's daughter Edie doing experiments at home.
“I don’t know the impact it had on the pupils I taught. But I do know what impact it had on me. The Pimlico Connection taught me about the privilege and importance of engaging face to face with people, understanding how to inspire them, challenge them, and learn together. And the Imperial engineer with his joke-telling computer provided early inspiration, not just for my job but also for who I am and how I parent. We do lots of experiments at home, which provide the starting point for some great conversations about life and the universe.
“It will always sit deeply with me that Imperial and all universities are – and will be for a long time - a treasure trove of things that are interesting, surprising, important, funny, challenging, and relevant to so many people. The more ways we can bring this to life, the more relevant it will be. I think that’s really what the Pimlico Connection has left me with: if you lift the lid of the box, everyone will find something that’s interesting or enthralling for them.”
Outreach at Imperial
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The Pimlico Connection
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Outreach at 50
Explore other interviews in our special series honouring 50 years of outreach at Imperial. Discover inspiring stories highlighting the impact of our work.
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