This post started life as a response to Psci (The St Paul’s School Science Blog) which posted this. This, combined with an unexpected talk delivered by the Highmaster prompted me to think deeper into a problem which I have previously given little thought to.

The Highmaster spoke to us about this this morning (mentioning this example). He mentioned the issue of these Science exams becoming what most people ought to know, rather than what a candidate taking a serious exam in a science ought to know. He also raised the issue of What over Why, not just knowing what happens, but knowing why it happens. The best example of this that I have heard is that of the heart in Biology. For GCSE, you have to know that the heart beats. But for IGCSE you have to know why, how and the different parts of the heart. This ides is also coupled with the death of practicals, which in itself is due to the lack of qualified, or even confident and competent teachers. Yet all that this government seem able to do (I don’t realisticaly see any change under the opposition) is convert other subject teachers into science teachers, leading to the troubling statistics about the lack of even A-Level qualification. The truth, as I see it, must be that as the government aims to find horrendously short term fixes to what is definetly a long term problem, it is forced to lower the exam standard, not because children are getting more stupid and less able to learn, but because the teachers that they have put in to teach them are less qualified. Science cannot and must not be taught from a text book. I can prove this on a personal level, because prep school science is so much more boring that “real” science as I have been learning. Practicals make science.

But I offer an example. I have been following (in fact, I Tivo’d) a BBC series called Rocket Science. It is basically about an expierienced Physics teacher trying to convince 13 year olds that Science is actually cool, through the medium of Fireworks. Its fairly bog standard BBC rubbish, except that it has a good point to make. The Physics teacher on the actual show may not be to my liking, I may find him intensely irritating, but the simple fact was the education that he was offering the kids in Physics and Chemistry involved hands on stuff, and not once did he use a textbook. But its not as though the experiments he was doing were particuarly complex. For Physics he used an Oscilloscope, a speaker and a ray box. For Chemistry, he did flame tests, and played with the harmless chemical that is in glowsticks. These are the sorts of experiments that I was doing in Year 8 and yet these were 13 and 14 year olds who were being described as “fortunate” for doing experiments that should be essential for GCSE.

In Conclusion, this country has a serious problem on its hands. The Highmaster said this morning that although teaching becomes a popular career during the recession, we must look further ahead, and anticipate the problems of the future, as the physics graduates start steering towards TNCs and Banks again, the government must work to attract them to the state sector.

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