Merseyside Young Health and Life Scientists

Merseyside Young Health and Life Scientists (MYHLS) is a rolling three-year programme of health-related activities and support for young people in Years 9-11, who are from under-represented groups and have the potential and interest in studying health and life sciences at University.

Each Autumn, local schools will be invited to nominate Year 9 pupils to participate in MYHLS. Once students have joined, they continue participating until the end of Year 11. 

Year 9 pupils experience all six course streams: 

• Medicine
• Dentistry
• Veterinary Sciences
• Psychology
• Health Sciences
• Life Sciences.

At the start of Year 10, pupils choose a stream and follow that programme throughout Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11). Pupils are then supported, where applicable, to apply for post-16 projects offered by our team.

Programme aims

• Increase pupil confidence, motivation and aspirations
• Develop pupil understanding of the subject qualification choices needed for health and life sciences study and careers
• Provide curriculum enrichment to stretch skills, abilities and understanding
• Familiarise pupils with the Faculty, University and campus
• Enhance pupil knowledge by visiting real life HLS settings such as a local hospital, veterinary practice or laboratories
• Support pupils to make informed choices and decisions.

What does the programme involve?

Events take place at the University, with activities designed to build knowledge and experience incrementally. Current HLS students and academics within the faculty work with MYHLS pupils, delivering practical and interactive health and life science related activities that are specific to each stream such as:

• Exploring the human body and careers in medicine
• Fix a broken tooth in our phantom head lab
• Use our lambing simulator in the vet school
• Lectures in cognitive and social psychology
• Explore Allied Health careers and use our healthcare simulators
• DNA extraction in our bioscience labs

Students will also take part in more broad ranging sessions, such as:

• Team building, problem solving and communication skills
• Life as a student in the Faculty and Health and Life Sciences
• Debating ethics
• Study support and mentoring
• Student finance
• Admissions
• Work experience and reflection

Who is it for?

Pupils in local partner schools are prioritised based on a range of indicators:

• A strong desire to study a health and life sciences subject
• Prior achievement in maths and science
• Predicted ability to progress to university level study
• Coming from a home where neither parent attended university in the UK or abroad
• Be in receipt of, or entitled to, free school meals
• Live in a neighbourhood which has a low rate of progression to higher education, or an area which has a high level of financial, social or economic deprivation. This is defined by the student's home postcode.
• Have parents working in non-professional occupations (socio-economic groups 4-8).

Or alternatively,

• Be in the care of their local authority, or have experience of being in care, or be a young adult carer.