Its partners are, alphabetically: Its associates are: Until around 2005 there had been a long-term decline in the numbers of students nationally enrolling on Undergraduate degree courses in Physics and Astronomy.
[citation needed] In 2013 it received a further £2.75m grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and £10.3m from its members to continue programmes from the first phase, to maintain and expand the network, to establish a dedicated regional graduate training programme for physics postgraduate students and address physics specific issues of student participation and diversity.
[citation needed] The SEPnet outreach programme has enabled all partners to engage with more schools, more conferences, more members of the public than individually they could have achieved.
The more than doubling of undergraduate applications to the network since 2008 and over 115% growth in UG population since 2007 (against a national increase of 30% over that period and nearly 50% above the base case projection in the original SEPnet business plan), the raising of the tariff points required for entry and the high growth in applications for entry in most of the partners accepted to be related to the outreach programme, building on the national interest in physics but surpassing it.
Due to the high numbers of students wanting to do physics in the South East region, a consequence of the SEPnet outreach efforts, Portsmouth have been enabled to start up their new course.
It introduces students to the scientific workplace, and acts as an invaluable resource for employers looking for a fresh perspective on their business challenges.