The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7467 p234-235
1 September 2007

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Involve them while they’re young — promoting pharmacy in primary schools

In this article David Allison and Joanne Moore describe how the University of Manchester's “Widening participation” programme is helping the school of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences to reach out to local primary schools and inspire the next generation of pharmacists

Where will the next generation of pharmacists come from? The answer lies on our own doorsteps.

There is a largely untapped reservoir of potential future pharmacists among pupils in inner city schools that have the academic ability, but are not applying to university at all, let alone to read a professional subject like pharmacy.

Although these pupils have much to offer, lack of parental experience of higher education coupled with growing up in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage results in low self-esteem and confidence.

Attitudes to learning and careers are formed early in young people’s educational careers; essentially many do not tend to consider themselves to be the “university type”

Even those who do often require nurturing and support to make it to, and through, university.

This article describes the experiences of the school of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Manchester in developing a widening participation programme for year 6 pupils in local primary schools, involving pupils from groups that are under-represented in higher education generally, to encourage application to university and in particular pharmacy subjects.

The University of Manchester is committed to being a leader in widening participation. For the past 10 years it has recognised inequities of access to higher education, often associated with social background, are inherently unjust and waste talent.

As part of an overall programme of activities aimed at addressing existing inequity and to support the progression of a talented cohort of young people currently under-represented in higher education, the Pharmacy in Primary Schools (PIPS) project was developed. PIPS was designed to raise awareness of higher education, build pupils aspirations and expectation around continuing in education post 16 years of age, and to introduce pharmacy as a viable career option through a range of interactive and fun activities.

The overall, long-term aim of the PIPS programme is to increase applications to pharmacy from non-traditional pupils — those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, certain ethnic minority groups, and those whose parents did not attend university. More specifically, PIPS is designed to change perceptions and raise pupil aspirations from the earliest opportunity, hence we targeted primary school pupils.

This programme focused, and will continue to focus, on a particular geographical area of South Manchester where there is no strong culture of progression to higher education, and from an early age, children are drawn into the notion that “university is not for me”. Indeed, figures show that progression into professional subjects such as pharmacy is practically unheard of.

The project targeted pupils in year 6 and in the Wythenshawe area of Manchester. Wythenshawe is the only area of Manchester where progression by young people to higher education is below 21 per cent. The area also contains areas within the group of top 1 per cent of most deprived in England on the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2004.

Participants were all at primary schools that have at least double entry years, and are feeders to secondary schools on the University of Manchester Medicine and Human Sciences Faculty-led mentoring-plus scheme (which caters for year 10 pupils onwards). Choosing such schools allows us to follow the progress of the pupils from the PIPS programme. Thirty pupils per school took part, selected for participation by teachers because they were talented.

The programme

The programme offered intensive and extended activities for primary pupils, rather than a one-off event, which would have been likely to have had less impact. The aim was to develop a project to provide a programme of activities that would enable good quality relationships to develop between staff and students of the university and pupils.

Also important was offering interactive and fun activities, while introducing pharmacy as a viable career option. All of the activities were designed to be hands-on, exciting, informative and motivational. To assist the programme, current pharmacy undergraduate students acted as “ambassadors”. The project was organised around four stages:

Preparation visits A preparation visit to the school took place to explore the children’s perceptions of higher education with a follow-up visit one week later. The first visit drew on material developed by Higher Futures 4U, and involved positive reflection, discussion of jobs and qualifications, and active games such as “thinking hats”.

These activities were designed to encourage children to reach their full potential and draw attention to progression routes to higher education. In the follow-up visit the pupils were initially challenged to recall topics discussed at the first visit, then introduced to pharmacy as a subject and career option. Hands-on exercises included looking at prescriptions and dispensing “dummy” medicines.

Visit to school of pharmacy A visit was arranged to the school of pharmacy and the University of Manchester campus for the children to take part in a range of pharmacy-related activities.

These included forming a molecule to show chemistry in action (Figure 1), and making emulsions and creams to demonstrate pharmacy formulation skills (Figure 2). Pupils were led by “Professor Cureall” (chemistry) and “Dr Gopain” (formulation) and were assisted by undergraduate ambassadors and pharmacy professionals.

After lunch in the refectory, there was a “graduation ceremony” with gowns in the Whitworth Hall, with both Professor Cureall and Dr Gopain in attendance. Pupils were presented with a certificate of achievement for successfully completing the day’s activities.

Each activity was undertaken in a different part of the university, thereby providing an opportunity for the pupils to gain some first-hand experience of university facilities and life.

Follow-up sessions Two 90-minute follow-up sessions were run at the school, led by students, whereby aspects of the Key Stage 2 curriculum were covered but with a pharmacy perspective.

This included an introduction to different types of medicine formulation, analytical pharmacy (identify the mystery powder), medicinal chemistry and tablet-making and packaging (Figure 3). In the final session pupils were asked to reflect upon what they had learnt during the programme.

Parents and carers’ session A session for parents and carers was arranged in order to discuss the project and thereby involve other key stakeholders in the process of thinking about higher education and what it can offer as well as future progression routes.

With the pupils on this programme being so young we believed it important to inform the “informers”. Future activities are planned that will involve the parents and carers working alongside the children, not only to support their children, but to raise their own awareness and aspirations.

The undergraduate ambassadors helped pupils to reflect upon what was learnt, and to consolidate their understanding of pharmacy through the hands-on curriculum-related sessions. Linking current pharmacy students with local young people meant they could act as role models, and could share their experience about what higher education is and what it can offer.

The ambassadors also gained from the project through developing and improving their communication, team working and time management skills as well as reinforcing their own basic knowledge.

Feedback and evaluation

Evaluation of the programme occurred at the end of each stage, using questionnaires, question-and-answer sessions and observation. The questionnaires were designed to be visual and required little writing. They included commands and questions such as “circle the words that best describe what you thought about the lessons”and “what would you like to say about this?”.

They also included rating scales to assess overall value and impact on confidence. Teachers were also asked their opinion on the lessons by questionnaire.

There is clearly a demand for these types of activities. Feedback was extremely positive throughout and the programme judged to be a resounding success by both the pupils and teachers. The sessions clearly met their objective of offering interactive and fun activities.

The vast majority of participants said the sessions were fun and enjoyable, exciting and interesting, and 70 per cent said they were inspiring. The workshops also seem to have been successful in terms of messages about university and career options. “Interesting” and “thought-provoking” were the most common responses to what the pupils thought of the sessions. This was backed up by comments made, which suggests that the sessions had stimulated participants to think about their future options.

Typical pupil’s comments are listed in the Panel (below).

Over 20 per cent said the sessions were different and challenging, and 10 per cent that they were too short.

Pupils gave the pharmacy-specific lessons an average Likert scale rating of 4.6 out of a possible 5, with all pupils who expressed a preference saying “I liked it” or “I liked it a lot”. Similar results were obtained for Stage 1 of the programme. Few students identified any negative aspects to the sessions.

Pupils were unanimous in terms of what they thought of the visit to the university, all ticking “I liked it a lot” on the feedback form. The vast majority (at least nine out of 10 in the group) said it was better than expected, fun, interesting, and exciting. Over 80 per cent said it was educational; 70 per cent said it was useful, and a similar proportion found it helpful and inspirational.

Only a handful found the event hard (three pupils), or confusing (two pupils). Highlights, in order of frequency, included making medicines, the graduation and the visit to the refectory.

The teachers viewed the programme as an ideal opportunity to expose the pupils to careers that required tertiary qualifications, and to professional careers such as pharmacy that pupils could aspire towards. They found the activities and focus of each session to be challenging but achievable, appropriate and linked well to the Key Stage 2 curriculum.

In essence, the teachers believed that by the end of the programme the pupils were in a position to be able to make an informed decision about pharmacy as a career. Parents and carers from 15 of the 30 pupils attended the final session. They too were extremely positive about the programme, many stating that their child had benefited enormously from attending by gaining a small insight into university life, raising their awareness of the future and realising that pharmacy was a varied and fun subject.

The future and beyond

PIPS provided a successful but short-term educational opportunity in Pharmacy to a targeted cohort of Year 6 primary school pupils. The project has shown that it is feasible to work with bright, aspiring pupils from socio-economically deprived backgrounds and with no family tradition of higher education and to successfully stimulate their interest in Pharmacy as an achievable future carer option.

Such a programme of closely targeted, inter-active, fun and sustained activities has the potential to be, in the main, transferable to pupils lacking a higher education background in other settings.

However, what we have not yet shown is a long-term impact on pupils’ career pathways. The PIPS programme has planted a seed of knowledge and interest in pharmacy, we now need to help that germinate and mature. Our intention is to continue to follow these pupils as they enter secondary school and to involve them in an on-going programme of activities, for example, Saturday morning workshops a couple of times a year in order to consolidate and build on their earlier experiences.

It is hoped that parents and carers will also join in on these sessions. From Year 10 the pupils will then qualify for the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences Mentoring Plus programme where pupils will be assigned to mentors from the profession.

It is our intention to follow this first cohort of pupils on the PIPS programme and to monitor their success rates and subsequent progress. We are confident that PIPS will not only be of benefit to these pupils, but also to pharmacy per se.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Our sincere thanks to Z. Mitchell, B. Spiteri and L. Hughes for their guidance and input, and especially the “ambassadors” M. Bell, Z. Hamrang, C. Hyde-Linaker, R. Puri and C. Rigby for their hard work and enthusiasm.