Give us our Physics Back! [purplecthulhu]

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Those of you involved in teaching or learning physics (or in fact any science) in the UK may find this rather interesting...

A physics teacher comments on the new 16 year physics exam.

Its going to be interesting to see how these kids cope (or otherwise) with A-level physics and how prepared they are for university physics when they get here in two years time. My guess is that this is another debasing of the state school curriculum, so that physics courses at university will inevitably become even more dominated by public school and grammar school pupils. Since one of the best ways of getting kids into the subject is having a teacher who understands it, this will just perpetuate the decline of basic sciences in the UK.

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There are 8 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Biology and/or Geography?

Rebewable energy was covered by geography when I was at school (I think). The sunbathing thing sounds like biology.

Aren't single subject sciences fairly unusual anyway - don't most kids do a combined sciences one?

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Most kids do, but most kids who want to do science at University don't, if you see what I mean.

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But the kids won't necessarily have access to secondary schools offering the single science exams. So the decision's being made for them.

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There is no reason that somebody with a double GCSE in a combined science course cannot go on and do science at University. As long as they meet their school's entry requirements for the relevant A-Levels they'll get the qualifications they need for University entry.

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I'm seeing some of this in the AQA intermediate exam. Some of what I'm being asked, isn't maths. Too often I'm asked to "describe in words". What they actually mean is "what is the correct terminology for..." but that isn't what it actually says.

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So even where it's possible to do the separate subjects at GCSE--and they aren't always offered by schools--they're not real sciences at all. I despair. (Says the Arts graduate with three decent science 'O' levels.)

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I've been saying this for months... This course does a fairly good job of being a "Basic science that will help you get by and understand things in everyday life" but a fairly poor job of being a rigorous and useful qualification for anyone with an interest in science.

We're with OCR, and in their course, most of the fluff is in Year 10, with the Year 11 course resembling the old style GCSE a lot more closely. There's more real science there.

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That's profoundly depressing; I only wish it were surprising :(

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purplecthulhu

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April