Attracting Pupils and Students to Natural Sciences: Challenges in Higher Education on the Example of Science Learning Centre Bioskop Masaryk University (Brno, the Czech Republic)

Many universities in the Czech Republic lack students´ interest in the studies of natural science.  That is why all the universities have to come up with an idea how to popularize these scientific fields to attract potential university applicants.  One of the ways of achieving that is to create educational centres, which are able, thanks to these programmes, to approach students of primary and secondary schools and show them the natural sciences. The presented example of one particular educational centre (Bioskop Masaryk University, Brno, the Czech Republic) evaluates the success rate of their activities while using written questionnaire survey among the visitors of the programmes (students of primary and secondary schools as well as their pedagogues).  The results have shown that thanks to these activities the centre created quality conditions for popularization of natural sciences. The results have also proven the  centre´s ability to present natural sciences in an attractive and entertaining way to students of elementary and secondary schools. These students expressed their interest in the study of natural sciences and they would like to visit the centre again.