READING UNIVERSITY CYBERNETICS

Early day motion 964, tabled 21 March 2005 by Jane Griffiths (Labour). Signed by 8 members.

That this House congratulates Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University on the success of the Cybernetics course which, at a time of falling applications for science subjects nationally and the closure of science departments, has seen a growth in applicants so that there are three hundred applications for one hundred places on the Cybernetics course despite the application grades having risen from Cs and Ds ten years ago to Bs now; welcomes the feed-through to the computer science and electronic engineering courses at the university which have also experienced increases of 11 per cent. and 16 per cent. respectively in the face of continued national drops in applications of between 10 and 25 per cent. in these subject areas; notes that every student on the four year course will leave having built a robot that will be able to move on command; and calls upon other scientists to learn from Professor Warwick how to teach subjects in a way that makes the subject interesting and relevant so that more students will want to develop a career in science.

Signatures by party: Labour 6, DUP 1, Liberal Democrat 1.