Ask many adults when they stopped enjoying science and they can usually tell you. It was not a sudden decision. It was a gradual sense, somewhere around the end of primary school, that science was difficult, serious, and probably not for them.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has identified that young people disengage from STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) when they cannot see its relevance to their lives, and that school science is skewed heavily towards the natural world at the expense of the made one.

Engineering, manufacturing, design, electronics: the subjects most directly connected to careers and to practical problem-solving are the ones least visible in the classroom. By the time a young person reaches sixteen and can opt out of science education, the decision has often already been forming for years.

HYEN founder Thomas believes it starts at primary school, when difficult-to-use equipment and a lack of practical support can make the subject seem intimidating.

“If you’re age eight, you shouldn’t be thinking science is this big, scary, complex thing. You should be thinking: science is fun,” he said.

HYEN is a York-based social enterprise that delivers hands-on STEM workshops for young people aged six to eighteen. Its starting point is not the curriculum, or exam results, or the skills gap. It is the child who already loves building things, who will spend forty minutes clicking magnetic connectors together without being asked, who is curious and unafraid until, at some point, the system teaches them to be otherwise.

Thomas himself was concerned that the academic science route was not for him after attending a university technical college for his later secondary education. However, he enrolled on an electronic engineering degree foundation year and won a Laidlaw Leadership and Research Scholarship, which took him to Boston to work as a STEM learning instructor at the Timothy Smith Network, an NGO that bridges the digital divide by creating opportunities for people of all ages to access technology education to prepare them for the 21st century workforce.

What he learned was:

“When you give people the right tools and show them they do belong in the room, actually they can do it. A lot of people just need the right sort of encouragement or the right tools to show that they can be involved with STEM. That is partly why HYEN exists,” he said.

He came back to the UK with a bigger ambition, to change how STEM education works for young people in this country, and to broaden who gets the opportunity to take part. HYEN grew out of that. Magnetronics, a magnetic electronics learning kit, was one of HYEN's early answers to a growing problem of STEM disengagement among young people.

In most school science lessons, building circuits means using crocodile clips: small stiff metal clamps that connect wires to components. For young children or those with limited fine motor skills, gripping them is difficult.

“We saw children just being left behind. They couldn’t do the science class. They just had to sit out. Can you imagine a year four student, seven or eight years old, being told that you can’t do this because you can’t grip a crocodile clip?” he said.

“Alternatively, if you walk into a primary school today and hear the words “we’re learning about electricity and circuits”, there is a chance that no one will actually be touching a wire. 

“Instead, children are often tapping components into place on a tablet, watching a simulated bulb light up, or even just watching a YouTube video of someone else doing it. No batteries, no switches and no real hands-on learning - just screens.”

The Royal Society and EngineeringUK's Science Education Tracker 2023 found the proportion of GCSE-age students in state schools in England doing hands-on practical science at least once a fortnight has nearly halved, from 44 per cent in 2016 to 26 per cent in 2023. Some 71 per cent of young people reported they wanted to do more practical science than they currently get.

HYEN's Magnetronics kits replace crocodile clips with magnetic connectors: tactile, satisfying, and accessible regardless of motor skills.

“In a lot of schools, the equipment they use is either old, broken, or very traditional, and children develop this wary mindset. There is this assumption that electronics is extremely difficult, and it shouldn’t be like that. It should be fun. It should be enjoyable. Once they realise that, their mindsets turn around completely,” he said.

HYEN workshops include electronics, mechanics and 3D printing. A second product, Sticky Circuits, blends electronics with arts and crafts using conductive fabric tape, so that children who do not think of themselves as science people can build working circuits into their own artistic creations. A child might make a cardboard lighthouse and wire it to light up. The practical thinking involved is identical to a conventional electronics lesson; the difference is where it starts.

“To solve problems, especially in engineering, you have to think outside the box. And the way to do that is to be creative. There’s a lot of crossover that people don’t realise,” he said.

Thomas is emphatic that the creativity children bring to primary school is not incidental to scientific thinking. It is the thing itself. A primary-age child does not yet know what they are not supposed to be able to do. They will build something and describe it with complete confidence, in terms entirely their own.

“I think the best age really is primary age. They do not know their boundaries. They are very creative,” he said. “I ask what something they have made is and they explain with enthusiasm. And you think, wow! We are just not harnessing that or  encouraging that enough.”

HYEN operates in schools, but also in libraries and community centres, a decision that reflects where the gap is widest. Children who are home-educated, outside mainstream education, or NEETs (not in education, employment or training), have little access to hands-on science.

“A lot of edtech companies focus on schools, but there is also a lot of potential in community centres and libraries. Some parents openly admit they don’t really understand science fully, so some of these workshops are almost the only real source of STEM teaching their children get. If the kids aren’t accessing these tools or having exposure to them, how can they know there’s a career path for them,” he said.

The response when children do get access is striking.

“We see a lot of girls especially at the end say: ‘You know what, I can see science is for me now, I can see engineering is for me.’ You see a whole different attitude across the classroom. We collect all the feedback handwritten, so you can see the drawings and comments, and a lot of them say: ‘I see myself being a scientist now, I see myself being an engineer now.’ For that class, in just one or two sessions, they had gone from not seeing themselves in that role to suddenly thinking anyone can do it,” he said.

After one primary workshop, teachers told Thomas that eighty per cent of the year group named his session as their favourite lesson of the entire year.

HYEN has reached over a thousand young people since launching. Thomas is building a freelance network so that workshops can scale beyond him, and upcoming sessions at the Royal Institution signal the direction of travel. The £8,000 Starting Up Award he received from UnLtd through its Funding Futures Programme in 2025, and the £12,000 Continuous Support Award just approved, have been important not only financially but in removing the practical barriers that come with building a business for the first time.

“My support manager Kyla has been phenomenal. It is my first time running a business, and with the demand being there it is tough. I have got to make sure the foundations are set so we can scale. UnLtd has removed a lot of barriers I was experiencing, just because of how well-connected and well-resourced they are,” he said.

He has also found in the wider UnLtd community something he had been missing since his scholarship ended: a room full of ambitious people tackling some of the toughest issues in society right now.

“Talking with other social entrepreneurs has been a massive boost. It is refreshing to see there are people out there trying to create change. And in science and engineering, you get told something won’t work, and then when it works, suddenly you’re a genius. UnLtd gives you that right encouragement to say: actually, you’re not crazy. You just need a bit of guidance, but you are definitely on the right path,” he said.

In three years, Thomas wants HYEN to be nationally recognised, with its kits available in homes as well as schools, reaching children in rural areas and harder-to-serve communities who cannot always get to a workshop.

“We could have a young child who’s the next Einstein sitting in a classroom, turned off at age eight because of one bad experience. For me, it is trying to make sure that we’re not losing that talent. So many young people have so much potential. We have to act now, put the right tools in their hands, and build the skills the country is going to need.”