Children in Oxfordshire will become more environmentally aware thanks to a new science project.

The Oxford Trust and the South Oxfordshire Education Business Partnership have teamed up with Esso to provide a valuable new resource for schools which they will launch at an innovative, problem-solving day for 80 ninth-year students from south Oxfordshire secondary schools, at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, near Didcot, on Wednesday.

Oxfordshire schools will have the benefit of six boxes of kit which can be used to carry out problem-solving activities on the themes of wind energy, the hole in the ozone layer, Earth observation from satellites, recycling plastics, water pollution and biomass fuels.

Bridget Holligan, co-ordinator of the event, said: "The environmental context that all the activities have been put in should make it interesting for students as this is an area that they are all becoming much more aware of."