Scottish pupils are falling behind those in every other country in Europe in science subjects because they think that the subject is “uncool”, it was claimed last night. Teachers were urged by the government yesterday to do all they could to reverse the perception.

Scotland’s reputation as a leader in mathematics and science was undermined last year when a survey found that it was performing worse than Kazakhstan, Slovenia and Armenia. The Scottish government has started a campaign to promote the subject in schools amid concerns that teachers are not inspiring pupils. The SNP administration is also looking at sending postgraduate students to help primary school pupils with experiments and to show them that science can be exciting.

It has awarded a grant of £2.1 million to the Scottish Schools Equipment Research Centre to support the professional development of science teachers and technicians, and has provided £250,000 for the continuous professional development of primary teachers, to be administered at the four science centres across the country. It has also provided pilot funding of £140,000 to help set up and strengthen school science clubs.

Anne Glover, the government’s chief scientific advisor, said it was essential that pupils’ stereotypes of science and scientists was broken. She said: “We’ve done a significant amount of research to understand what our young people think about science. One of the main things that came out again and again is that young people think science isn’t cool. We do have an upward struggle. Young people don’t always understand how important scientists are in all our lives.”

Fiona Hyslop, the Education Secretary, admitted that there had been some criticism of how science was taught to 5 to 14-year-olds. At the end of last year, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science report ranked Scotland 15th in the league table for science at S2 and behind Latvia and Kazakhstan for science and maths achievement. Ms Hyslop said that the government was trying to change this.

“I think scientists are very passionate about their subject,” she said. “What we have to do is translate that into the learning for pupils.”A spokesman for Universities Scotland said the campaign needed to target the “X Factor generation”, which he said was more interested in marrying footballers and winning reality television programmes than becoming an engineer.

He said that children of the same age in other European countries were keen to pursue academic careers, which they regarded as glamorous.

The SNP campaign will involve billboard advertising aimed at 14 to 18-year-olds and a meeting in May that will “provide ideas on how we can empower teachers to make science exciting”.

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