  Societal biases are a major issue in school students' access to and
interaction with science. Schools engagement programmes in science from
universities, like independent research projects, which could try and tackle
these problems are, however, often inequitable. We evaluate these concerns
applied to one such programme, `Physics Research in School Environments'
(PRiSE), which features projects in space science, astronomy, and particle
physics. Comparing the schools involved with PRiSE to those of other similar
schemes and UK national statistics, we find that PRiSE has engaged a much more
diverse set of schools with significantly more disadvantaged groups than is
typical. While drop-off occurs within the protracted programme, we find no
evidence of systematic biases present. The majority of schools that complete
projects return for multiple years of the programme, with this repeated buy-in
from schools again being unpatterned by typical societal inequalities.
Therefore, schools' ability to succeed at independent research projects appears
independent of background within the PRiSE framework. Qualitative feedback from
teachers show that the diversity and equity of the programme, which they
attribute to the level of support offered through PRiSE's framework, is valued
and they have highlighted further ways of making the projects potentially even
more accessible. Researcher-involvement, uncommon in many other programmes,
along with teacher engagement and communication are found to be key elements to
success in independent research projects overall.
