Tauranga’s House of Science celebrates 10th birthday

A teacher’s “random idea” a decade ago has now grown into a multi-award-winning organisation that helps more than 100,000 children each year learn about science.

Tauranga’s Chris Duggan quit her job to start the House of Science, which develops bilingual resource kits for primary schools with materials teachers can use for science lessons and improve students’ science literacy.

Marking the House of Science’s 10th anniversary at a celebratory event at Classic Flyers last week, Duggan, the founder and chief executive, said the growth of the organisation in the past decade had surpassed her expectations.

“I can’t quite believe we are 10 years old. What started as a rather random idea has grown into a multi-award-winning organisation that directly impacts over a 100,000 children every year.”

Speaking to the Bay of Plenty Times, Duggan said the idea came during her seven years as the head of science at Tauranga Girls’ College when she noticed a lack of scientific knowledge in the children who were coming into secondary school classrooms.

In 2012, the Education Review Office (ERO) released a report revealing that 73 per cent of New Zealand’s primary schools did not have an effective science programme in place.

“I read that and thought, ‘Oh my goodness, nearly three-quarters of our kids are coming into high school without a good foundation in science’. I knew it was bad, but that was just horrific. That statistic just really blew me away,” Duggan said.

She said by the time children were entering high school they had probably “already made up their mind” about what they were interested in, and without this foundation, they were unlikely to envisage themselves in the science field.

“I have got a Dutch background and I am one of those people that thinks ‘don’t just complain about it, do something’. So I literally quit my job halfway through 2013 and set up a trust — not really knowing what I had in store.”

Chris Duggan says the growth of the organisation in the past decade has surpassed her expectations. Photo / Alex Cairns

Duggan’s original vision was that the House of Science would stick to the Western Bay of Plenty, focusing on the local primary and intermediate schools, with the goal to empower teachers to support them in the subject of science.

The charity has since grown to have 20 branches throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, delivering hundreds of kits to primary schools a fortnight and reaching tens of thousands of children as a result.

“Science is absolutely crucial. It helps you make good decisions for your own health and wellbeing and that of your family, and that of the planet, and it just underpins so much of life. So that whole scientific literacy in students, I am absolutely passionate about that,” Duggan said.

She said she believed the beauty of science was it encouraged curiosity, and schools should be fostering the “innate curiosity” in every child.

Te Manawa ō Pāpāmoa school principal Shane Cunliffe said the House of Science kits were effective in helping with students’ learning, but also gave teachers the confidence to teach science.

“They are providing a door-to-door service. It is also largely accessible from a cost perspective so the schools aren’t having to fork out for the resources in the hope that they will be used — whereas these kits get delivered and picked up and are pretty easy to follow.”

Cunliffe said having an effective science curriculum in primary school students was “essential”.

“It makes them curious about the world around them ... and with the way everything is headed with climate change and our world sort of falling apart, we need our next generation looking at what they are doing on a daily basis that can actually contribute positively to our everyday lives.”

Shania Callender is a journalism student at Auckland University of Technology.