Education and Science Policy Priorities

• Enabling dialogue between bioscientists, policymakers, and the public.
• Providing evidence synthesis.

• Supporting and empowering underrepresented communities in the biosciences.
• Advising ethics and integrity standards in research practice.
• Providing evidence to policy on development of the bioscience workforce; research, development and innovation infrastructure; research funding; and research communication.
• Advising reproducibility and open access standards in research practice.

• High-quality initial teacher education (ITE) and subject-specific continuous professional development (CPD) can improve retention rates.
• Raising the professional status of teachers in all educational settings, and making sure teachers are being supported to develop their subject-specific knowledge, and deployed appropriately within their subject discipline.

Teaching and learning policies should work towards ethical, equitable and inclusive learning, curricula, and assessment. The curriculum must reflect the current needs of students and employers, and support progression into technical, vocational, and academic qualifications, ensuring parity of esteem in these routes to allow students to continue to study the biosciences, progress into higher education and the workplace.

Our current pillars are nature and climate, ethical biological innovation, and biological security. The pillar priorities focus on complex, current and important scientific areas of challenge, change, innovation and development for society, where the biosciences are key, with issues that cut across disciplines, sectors, regions, and nations.

• Providing evidence to policy on the technological and ethical implications of the use of animals, and of the use of genetic knowledge, in research.
• Advocating for One Health evidence and principles in policymaking, including plant health.
• Raising the profile of biodiversity loss, and chemicals and waste pollution, in policymaking, by advising on the connectedness of global challenges, including climate change.

Our work also seeks to advance professional training and standards in these areas. Practical work and the development of practical skills are highly valuable, and must be an integral part of all biology taught in schools, colleges and universities.