On the basis of our experience at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Debrecen, the high number of engineering students who fail to meet the requirements of the different foundation and special subjects can be explained by their insufficient secondary school knowledge in mathematics and physics. In the lack of the necessary basic knowledge students are unable to get through the different subject in time, so they lag behind the curriculum. To handle the problem from the first semester of the 2009/10 academic year we introduced a compulsory subject Basic Knowledge of Natural Sciences. The aim of this subject is to summarize and repeat those parts of elementary and secondary school mathematics, geometry and physics which are necessary as basic knowledge at our Faculty. In the following we present our experiences about the introduction and instruction of this subject.