Mark Rutherford is a state funded school in Bedford, England.

Through the generous support of a local charity (The Harpur Trust) we have a 6m Portable Planetarium from Emerald Planetarium Systems for which we produce Stellarium shows and are beginning to release our own video versions of these shows. We have also collaborated on a show and are wanting to expand this area.

The Planetarium is utilised by other schools in the Bedford area and usually reach over 6000 students in a normal school year.

Our mission statement and aims are:
To stimulate students imagination and wonder in STEAM subjects including Astronomy, Art and Mathematics.
To engage students in learning about STEAM subjects.
To inspire students to further study both for academic achievement and for their own lifelong learning.
To provide an inclusive environment that provides a stimulating, engaging and inspiring learning environment regardless of academic and physical ability.
To create connections with other schools, community groups, other planetariums and organisations to enhance the immersive learning environment.
To develop the use of the planetarium throughout the school’s curriculum especially in STEAM subjects.
To become a centre of excellence for the use of the immersive learning environment for teaching across the curriculum.

To support the delivery of the Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 and GCSE Triple Science curricula when Space and Astronomy topics are taught.
To help with an outreach program with our feeder schools.
To support the delivery of other Science topics in an innovative environment thereby stimulating interest in Science.
To introduce an innovative learning environment into other curricula areas.
To develop cross-curricula links between subjects e.g. with Computing/ICT where students could write code to program the Planetarium.

To provide a state of the art, exciting and fun mobile planetarium outreach service to Bedford schools.
To train and enthuse teachers in Bedford schools in the teaching of Space Science.
To use the Planetarium in all subject areas.