How should we teach science?

Just to clarify. This text is the text of a letter sent to the Guardian which may or may not be published. I was moved to write it because I felt strongly that this was a process out of control.

Tedious though the subject is, the curriculum for Physics is an embodiment of our accumulated knowledge and a specification of what people need to know in order to 'become a physicist'. It is actually of profound cultural and scientific importance.

Many of the problems that the curriculum claims to address our actually not the job of a curriculum. Specifically at this meeting, the role of inspiring students was placed number 1 on a list of things GCSE Physics and Chemistry needed to do. This is the job of teachers. Similarly number 3 on the list was the creation of a "Culture of Curiosity" and again this is really the job of teachers. However many teachers are not able to provide this inspiration and cultural background. Why not? Because the process of teaching itself has become dumbed down.

In the QCDA model,teachers mediate between students and 'Experts' who set the curricula and schemes of work. They are not required to be experts in the subject themselves. Since teachers are under intense pressure simply to get children through exams, and they cannot bring scientific cultural experience or subject knowledge to bear, then inevitably the people who prescribe the schemes of work and the exams get to determine what actually gets done in classrooms. In this structure it is inevitable that the schemes of work with minimal workload and the easiest exams will prevail. The final pernicious twist is the fact that some exam boards/awarding bodies (which are typically not for profit) are associated with publishers (who are most definitely for profit).

It seems to me that in amongst all this, there is no one in whose interest it is to raise standards. To ask for people to know more or demonstrate additional understanding. Someone who can and will just say 'No, This is not good enough." Personally I think IoP should refuse to accredit the worst of these schemes of work - and possibly all of them. The alternative - the status quo - is a disservice to children and simply further discriminates against children from less priveliged backgrounds.

Hi Michael. You make a lot of excellent points. Below is a letter that similarly may or may not be published in the Grauniad/Times!

Science is an intellectually challenging subject based on a coherent hierarchy of abstract conceptual models, mastery of which require a parallel development in mathematical ability. The Government has spent huge sums on a laudable campaign to increase state school students’ interest in becoming scientists and engineers whilst simultaneously distorting the curriculum to make it more ‘accessible’ and ‘relevant’ in ways that make it more, not less, difficult to learn enough science to follow it as a career.

Content has been steadily removed over the last few years in the name of accessibility. That which remains is largely chosen to illustrate wider ‘societal’ themes without sufficient regard to the theoretical coherence of the science being taught. For example: "decisions about energy supplies" – a bit of heat transfer, a bit of nuclear physics, a bit of transformers, a bit of atmospheric chemistry and a bit of ecology.

As assessment must not now seek to test understanding through mastery of mere knowledge, we now have a system at age 11-14 which has replaced SAT exams with a typical piece of new Labour bureaucratic micromanagement, having 90 or so skills based performance statements. Teachers must dream up a series of ‘contexts’ to deliver this ill conceived piece of hoop jumping. I have been told at a recent training day that “it’s all about skills now; they can look up facts on Google”. Would you want to be treated by a doctor who has spent five years honing her evaluation skills instead of mastering tedious old anatomy?

The QCDA adopts a stonewalling and defensive attitude to any criticism of this. The IGCSE, which retains a coherent conceptual structure, cannot be offered in state schools as it “doesn’t conform to the Science Subject Criteria” (the very cause of the problem), whilst calls to offer IGCSE in state schools are denounced as “elitist”. The two tier system is returning to British education with a vengeance. Are we happy with independent school students learning about electromagnetic induction whilst their comprehensive peers have to grapple with assessment criteria such as “identify the use of evidence and creative thinking by scientists in the development of scientific ideas” when they have little clear idea of what those scientific ideas are?

University scientists, (as distinct from the culprits in the education departments), are belatedly showing signs of waking up to the situation, whilst the media and the wider political class, arguably dominated by Arts graduates, seem to remain blissfully unaware of the implications. Meanwhile, amidst signs of panic over UK students being overtaken in science and technology by their overseas competitors, the IGCSE is doing a roaring trade with…those very same competitors!

Thank god someone is shouting out about this. The current level of dumming down is frightening. The jump from GCSE to A level is now huge. Next in line will be more watering down of the A levels...

I am a retired Physics teacher. I read two GCSE 'Physics' papers last week. To say they were Micky Mouse is an insult to Micky Mouse. Their main achievement must surely have been to help to convince the more able that A level Physics was not for them as it, too, would offer no challenge. Very depressing.

It's all so sad. I particularly agree with Tim Hickson here. I teach physics at a sixth form college, and I think I'm mostly concerned that some of the brightest and the best just aren't choosing physics at A level because they are no longer aware how challenging and rewarding it can be. Particularly having had precious little opportunity to see how wonderfully mathematics weaves through and underpins the whole of physics.

Education needs to be removed from being a political pawn, subject to the whim of any minister or party trying to score points. It needs to be released from the constant barrage of initiatives, inspections and comparisons that do a level of harm that is utterly underestimated by anyone not working inside education. The regular throwing around of criticism and blame is far worse than not being constructive: it forces us all to miss the wood for the trees. All criticisms of education can be traced back to it lacking independence. There are intelligent people who have good ideas about how to improve education -- and they're ignored everyday because their ideas don't sit well with either political will or political correctness gone mad.

I'm a Head of Physics at a very highly achieving state school in Cheshire. For years I have watched my subject being eroded away by a grotesque government-led drive to seemingly want to level every playing field -- as if it was the fundamental right of every child to be able to obtain an A* in every subject, so as to avoid discrimination in any form whatsoever. It's insanity. Can everyone be a concert pianist? Can everyone be the next Picasso? Can everyone be the next Michael Phelps? Of course not -- but I can envision a day in the near future when anyone will be able to get a qualification and call themselves a nuclear physicist. How? Well, get rid of all the hard bits, because, well, it's not fair if most people can't do it, is it? This is madness! Every child deserves access to an education that supports them in their future, but at the moment it seems that actually there is progressively just "one" future -- for all.

Taken away from the QCDA, the exam boards and the ministers, school curricula could once more become fit for purpose. Currently, however, education is just a play thing for politicians to arrogantly tussle over. As a teacher, it sickens me to witness this selfish and childish destruction, even if it is dressed up to sound defensible. But what really obstructs me in doing anything about it is the well-managed ignorance of a public who are therefore more easily diverted by the soundbite stereotyping that is a truly effective camouflage for the rank decay at education's heart.

In the past few years I have been on a variety of local level committees aimed at addressing the STEM agenda, partcularly the shortage of physical scientists, engineers and mathematicians. I have also been to many meetings hosted by people representing the voice of government. In the former there has been much disussion about the cutting of substantive content and the level of content and in the latter a repeated rhetoric of standards are rising.

How can stanards be rising when, as David above states, a GCSE A grade Key stage 5 student struggles to the point of tears with suvat equations that used to be in the GCSE (noteven O-level). I too, like William, have used GCSE and CSE texts with A-level students (in my last school my Head of Physics told me off once for using GCSE Physics by Avison with a Y12 class - becaue it was too hard). I have even been known to bring down an arrogant sixth former by presening them with a copy of Abbott.

I personally believe that if are to truly address the STEM issue that now exists in this country that rather than massaging the figures as has been happening we should be making these subjects elitist. Yes everyone should do some science up to GCSE but have a "GCSE Science for everyday life" qualification and then have the eite students doing a rigorous and interesting separate sciences. Not all GCSEs can be or should be equal. My best students have always liked to do the "hard stuff"; it makes them feel clever and like they have achieved something worthwhile.

I'm sure I could say more and that I could have been more eloquent but it is late and I should really be in bed. Thank you Michael for taking a stand

I guess I'm the first person to post here as a current A-level student at a state school. I'm honesly quite upset about the way science exams are being handled currently. I took my GCSEs 2 years ago and managed to achieve A*s in Maths and sciences as well as French and art (and a handful of As and Bs) learning the syllabus in less than a year. I was actually disappointed in the lack of challenge and decided to continue sciences and Maths in AS level. I took Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths, Further Maths, and General Studies AS levels (Recieving 5 As and an A in my first further Maths module) and have continued all but Bio and GS to A2 which I will be completing in June. I suppose what I'd like to say is that from the view of a student in a well respected state school, so many people are sick and tired of sciences, physics in particular, despite fantastic teaching mainly due to the horrendous GCSE syllabuses. I will be continuing my physics studies at Imperial College or Warwick in October and if I tell anyone that this is my plan, they look at me as if I'm mad. Even current physics A level students seem to be lacking inspiration or any kind of passion for the subject as most people leave their GCSEs feeling bored, no matter what result they receive. I also think there are major issues with A level physics mainly because Maths is not a required subject, and for people doing physics A levels and who want to take the subject to a higher level, the current state of the curriculum doesn't allow students to learn about concepts to a degree allowing complete understanding. In my physics class there are currently 2 people not doing Maths A levels and the fact that they don't means that the rest of the class lose learning time due to the teachers having to explain basic mathematical ideas to them. We can't derive things through calculus or anything because of this. I'm aware that the examining bodies don't want to decrease the numbers of students taking physics and inevitably making Maths compulsory would do this, but that choice would in turn greatly improve the learning experience for passionate students and prepare them more thoroughly for science in later life. Going into a degree, I do feel that I've lost out on what could have been a much more engaging few years of school.

You can take A-level Physics without A-level Maths? Galileo must be spinning in his grave in Florence.

Here's what the man acknowledged by Einstein as "the father of modern science" had to say on that topic, in his work The Assayer from 1623:

"Philosophy is written in this grand book — the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. That language is mathematics... without which, we are wandering about in a dark labyrinth."

How can anyone who calls themself a physicist, at the AQA or anywhere, not subscribe to that?!

It's not so much that lunatics have taken over the asylum, Michael; rather it is imbeciles who have become masters of our school education system. We must rout them.

Best wishes for your future studies; I am sure when you get to University you will thrive there, in an environment that will reward you with the intellectual challenges that you deserve.