Policy and Evidence

The Royal Society of Biology has developed education and science policy priority aims to support the bioscience sector, and primary, secondary and tertiary teaching and learning. Our policy activity is guided by these priorities, and the policy positions we develop and seek to influence are underpinned by this framework, RSB's five year strategy and mission, our commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion, and our climate and nature strategy.

RSB meets regularly with officials in government departments across all four UK nations, regulatory bodies for informal and formal discussions on funding for science and education, policy initiatives, and programmes to support scientists, teachers and learners. Our teams gather evidence and views from the bioscience and education sectors to inform formal consultations, calls for evidence and inquiries. We are committed to ensuring that we provide Government and other policy makers with a distinct point of access to authoritative, independent, and evidence based advice, representative of the widest range of bioscience disciplines.

RSB acts as a single unified voice, representing a diverse membership of individuals, learned societies, and other organisations. We actively seek input from RSB members and fellows through our committees, by convening special interest groups, and working in collaboration with other scientific organisations through partnerships such as the Science Education Policy Alliance, Learned Societies Group; networks such as the UK Reproducibility Network; declarations such as the Concordat on Openness in Animal Research, and through our membership of the Science Council, Campaign for Science and Engineering, and others.

The RSB continues to refine how we measure the impact of our policy work.

As well as giving our members and Member Organisations an indication of the wider benefit their support, expertise and collaboration is bringing for the biosciences sector through the work of the RSB, the results of our impact evaluations help to guide our strategic decision-making.

In this section, you can see published summaries of our impact evaluations, including:

• Our latest annual impact review (2024) outlines a summary of our impact over the past year.
• Published annual impact review summaries will be uploaded to our Policy Resource Library.
• An infographic that summarises our impact over a three-year period from June 2018 – May 2021 inclusive. We produced this following a ‘detailed snapshot’ internal review and report.
• For more information on the impact of our policy work, contact science.policy@rsb.org.uk. 

To understand the benefits of RSB membership and how you can get involved in supporting our work, contact membership@rsb.org.uk.

There are many ways to get in RSB's policy activities:

• This page will be updated regularly with emerging policy areas and publications
• Our Policy Resource Library is a free, searchable library of policy publications from RSB and its Member Organisations
• Sign up to our science and education newsletters
• Keep an eye out for opportunities to join our education and science policy focussed committees.
• Share your areas of expertise and interests with us