New Report Indicates Profound Problems Face UK Science Education. (November 22, 2005)

    The University of Buckingham yesterday released a report by Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson from the Centre for Education and Employment Research.

The study highlights the chronic shortage of specialist physics teachers in the UK as well as the need to provide frontline support and training for biology and chemistry specialists who also have to teach physics.

Professor Peter Main, director of education and science at the Institute of Physics said bluntly, "We urgently need to recruit more specialist physics teachers. There are far fewer physicists going into teaching than chemists or biologists. Government should set specific recruitment targets for the individual sciences (rather than science as a whole) to reflect this and to help focus efforts and teacher recruitment initiatives... [The] report clearly shows that pupils being taught physics by non-specialists are not performing as well [as those taught by teachers with degrees in physics]. Professional development for non-specialists must be seen as a priority by both schools and the government."

The study, commissioned by the Royal Society, found that physics teachers now represent just 12.8% of UK science teachers, down from a third in 1990. In addition, compared to 1991, while the overall numbers of A-level entries in 2005 had risen 12.1%, entries in physics decreased 35.2 %, entries in mathematics 21.5%, and entries in chemistry 12.6%.

Royal Society president, Robert May, in responding to the report said:

The profound problems facing science at A-level extend well beyond physics. We have consistently highlighted the general downward trend of students studying the sciences apart from biology and maths at A-level.  If we fail to address this then we risk losing the ability to train the next generation of scientists, technologists and engineers.

    The Government, and particularly the Department for Education and Skills, needs to wake up to the problems facing science education. It does not have a detailed strategy for tackling the problems in science and maths education and the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State did not even acknowledge that there are any problems in their speeches on education last week. These trends in science simply cannot be allowed to continue if the Government is to meet its own targets as set out in the 'Science and Innovation Framework' published last year.

    If we are serious about there being an adequate supply of UK trained scientists, technologists and engineers in the future, it is clear that something needs to change. But the Government doesn't seem to be listening to what the science community is saying about these problems. The Government must join forces with the science community to explore why all these targets and initiatives have still not delivered an effective solution and then identify the mechanisms that can help it get its plans for science education back on track.

Similar findings have been made in a number of other first world countries including Australia and allow Australia to look at the situation as indicating that if we continue on our current path, we are unlikely to significantly regress relative to our cohort.

On the other hand we might get weaving to get a marked jump on the rest of the field -- that is if there were a belief in the efficacy of doing so.