Tell us your priorities for our next free resources - and win £100 to share between you and your biology department (3 x £100 vouchers)

We’re here to help you with what you really need in schools – so every year we ask you to have your say.

This year, based on your feedback, we’ve prioritised creating materials supporting the new A-level practical endorsement, and a new KS3 Outline Scheme of Work (to be launched in September). We’ve been working on more posters to send out into schools, and we’ve partnered with the RHS and the European Space Agency on a fabulous space biology project.

Now we want to know what your priorities are for the next year.

To thank you for sharing your ideas, we’re offering 3 x £50 John Lewis vouchers for you and £50 science equipment vouchers for your department.

New Resource - A-level set practical - Using a potometer

The second in our collection of resources designed to support the use of practicals across various new A-level biology specifications (OCR, AQA, Eduqas and Edexcel).

This cheap, simple potometer allows students to work individually or in pairs to measure the rate of transpiration of a plant specimen  within a one hour lesson. Students can record the water loss at regular intervals and could investigate the effect of different abiotic factors on the rate of transpiration.

These practical activities can be used to meet the needs of the practical endorsement side to these A-levels. The teacher and technician support materials not only facilitate running the activity, but support the teacher to get the best learning value from it.

The student worksheet helps the student structure their thoughts about the practical, provide a record of their skills for the practical endorsement and grow their enthusiasm for practical work in Biology.

We'll be releasing further resources to support practical work in the new A-levels over the next few weeks.

View the resource  

News - Why what you know about nitrogen fixation may be wrong

Where in the plant does nitrogen fixation happen? Ask any of your colleagues, and they’ll say that it’s the result of bacterial symbiosis in the root nodules of legumes. So how poplars living in nutrient-poor soils could be the fastest growing non-tropical trees was a mystery.  

But new research reported in Science argues that poplars – and other trees – have bacteria within their leaves, transforming nitrogen from the air into a form available to the plant. When scientist Sharon Doty transferred the bacteria into rice leaves, the rice seedlings grew taller, put on more biomass, and prepared to sprout more grain. Could this new discovery be a key to feeding the 805 million people currently going hungry?

Find out more

News - How bouncing raindrops spread disease and death

Humans spread disease through sneezes. For plants, it's bouncing raindrops that spread bacteria and fungal spores, coated in slimy mucilage, across our fields.

Now high-speed videography has let researchers capture the moments at which the rain drop lands and disease spreads. Watch these amazing videos and discover how these discoveries might help us increase crop yields sustainably.   

Find out more