‘A’ Levels and Schools ‘letting down UK science’
August 10th, 2007 by Stephen
I wrote some posts about A Levels last year. This was amongst them:
My third post on ‘A’ level standards, and this time the issue is a report carried by the BBC that schools are ‘letting down UK science’.
UK schools are letting down business by producing too few scientists, the Confederation of British Industry says. Director-general Richard Lambert said bosses had “serious anxieties” … Even universities had to offer remedial classes to science students to help fill gaps in their knowledge, [the CBI] added. The CBI said the number of A-level students taking physics had fallen 56% in 20 years. In chemistry the decline was 37%.
Indeed this is all part of the current trend in ‘A’ levels, and perhaps part of the reason that ‘A’ levels seem to be getting so much easier - the harder subjects are being shunned by students.
In the following graph I have plotted the number of candidates for physics GCE ‘A’ level between 1992 and 2001 and then added the pass rates at grades A, A-C and A-E. I have also added (in green) the A-C pass rate for all subjects.
Notice the trend in number of candidates for physics is downwards (as the CBI have noted). The pass rates are increasing ahead of the trend for all subjects. This may indicate that the weaker students are primarily the students avoiding the subject, encouraging the improving trend.
But what does this do for UK science? Why are people shunning physics and other hard sciences? Could it be that GCSE has already failed these students? Before GCSEs replaced the old ‘O’ level system, students would choose from various sciences, typically physics, chemistry and biology. This was replaced with a generalist system where all science was taught together under a single GCSE that would count as two GCSEs.
Notice that we did not decide to amalgamate all language teaching into a “languages” GCSE. Neither did we sweep the rest of the subjects up under an “arts” heading.
So why did we do away with the various sciences at GCSE? Could it be because science is more expensive to teach? thus if we teach less of it, we can save money? Could it have been related to chronic shortages of physics teachers?
Whatever the reasons for the decision, it was wrong and it is failing children who consequently will not even attempt the science ‘A’ levels, and thus the talents of a generation of young potential scientists are being lost to the UK economy and culture.
It is time to return the traditional three sciences to the UK national curriculum.
