When we started I’m a Scientist we used our March events to allow teachers to test the event and for them to come back in June with more classes. That time after school exams when teachers looked for something to inspire kids was the ideal time.

Times have changed since then. March remains popular as teachers look for activities to coincide with British Science Week, but June is no longer the most popular time of year. We think this is due to increasing numbers of schools starting the next year’s timetable and curriculum after exams and that fallow period is no longer fallow.

November is where we saw some spectacular growth in 2015. We’re not sure what has driven this – we’ll investigate and we’ll rebalance when in the year we run zones.

The other clear narrative from this graph is that excluding the lower than expected level of requests in June 2014, demand for I’m a Scientist is increasing and outstripping demand. The past four events have been oversubscribed and March looks like going the same way as November 2015. There are some advantages in terms of zones being busy, but we need a balance.