Historically, we’ve been told that there are three key areas of education, deliberately paraphrased (and misspelled!) as Reading, (W)Riting And (A)Rithmetic. Regardless of whether you consider the Three R’s to all be R’s at all, the sciences have been added over time to form the core of most school curriculum.

It’s also become clear that over time, as more data has been collected and analyzed relating to student attainment, a trend emerges that children from lower income backgrounds perform less well than their wealthier counterparts.

As a result, universities across the US have started to offer additional support to young people to help bridge the gap and open up opportunities that would otherwise have been out of reach.

For example, the Standford Medical Youth Science Program runs through the summer break over five weeks and gives the class of thirty a chance to learn through interactive workshops about health issues resulting from different backgrounds.

Time and again, studies have shown how an individual’s potential is impacted heavily by their access to education and experiences. It clearly gives educational institutions an opportunity to tap into the brilliant minds that come from more deprived backgrounds, where traditionally university might have felt out of reach as a further education route.

You can read more about the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program (SMYSP) here and how it slots into the wider initiative called Science Teaching Through Art here.