Physics GCSE: 'insultingly easy, non scientific, and vague'

[DominiConnor]

The Arts graduates strike up another victory against the teaching of science

As a footnote to this article Lucy Sherrif herself holds a highly respectable degree in Physics.

I rather regret the passage of clasical optics, since it makes the teaching of A level Biology rather longer than it 'needs' to be. I have to teach them all the basics of optics if they are to understand the focusing mechanism of the eye. And becuse I have to teach it to all the class, I cannot spend the time getting the lower attainment kids 'up to speed'. Or stretching the more able.

Time was, you could spend a shorter time, and concentrate on those kids who needed extra time.

Does that make the dumbing down of each individual science contagious ?
Classical optics requires only GCSE maths, but is almost wholly mathematical, which obviously makes it a candidate for the chop.

I'm not sure, if that is the reason.

Optics is one of those areas that you can get lots of kids to 'gel' with, since the practicals are fairly simple, and systematic. It is a good one for the kinesthetic learners in the group, good to bump up the D / C grades.

Because they can literally 'see' what is happeneing, they 'get' it. And the maths just follows on, and is, as you say, quite basic.

The tendency seems to be that the exam boards are keen for kids to look at the 'big picture' sciece topics. Now, I can understand this because the big picture stuff is fun and also often relevant to evry day life (gene testing, or CO2 neutral fuels for example). What they fail to understandis that if the kids are really going to understand this stuff in a meaningful way, they have to understand the basic science first.

Biggest problem that I have, at all stages, is that the curriculum time is so short, and we have so much 'stuff' to teach them, that we don't have the time to teach them scientific method and process.

Another discussion highlighting how stupid our children are and how clever we were at doing the old style exam papers. I wonder how many children failed all their exams back in the 70s - probably quite a few.

Modular tests: why do people not think it a good idea to test children after they have completed a unit, instead of make them try to remember what they learnt 2 years ago in a wholly summative form of assessment.

I threw a bit of a wobbly in my maths exam back in 1978, and I have only just managed to resit it. As I hadn't done coursework or anything like that I got an X - in other words I was a miserable failure in maths despite being predicted an A.

I don't like coursework at home because I think you can cheat, but I think modular tests give students information about how they are performing and are encouraging for them. I know how hard my dd works for her grades, much much harder than I ever did. I revised the night before for my o levels and I passed them all (except maths). I am pretty sure that she won't be doing that and it won't be because I am telling her to revise either.

The one thing about modular exams that I don't like is that it tends to make the kids see topics in isolation.

So they tend to think that stuff in Foundation can be ignored once the exam is over, for example. It makes them poor at seeing the interleaving threads that run through topics.

I also get very annoyed with the 'We can resit it' attitude as well.

Mrs Sourpuss and Grumpy face

Figroll sums up beautifully what's wrong with the thinking about science exams, indeed exams in general in this country.
The whole point of exams is that loads of people fail them. They aren't there to reward effort, or make kids happy, they are a measurement or attainment.
They certainly shouldn't be a mechanism that Brits can use to pretend their kids aren't the most ignorant in the developed world.

Science is not a sequence of isolated topics. If you teach kids friction, then ask them about friction of course many will get better marks.
But if they've forgotten it a year later then they have failed to learn about it.
Tough.
Also modularisation means whole classes of useful exam questions can't be asked. The reason an object resists movement can be inertia, friction, magnetic fields or bloody mindedness, but if you modularise ,they will know that it's friction.

To be fair, those sorts of questions can be asked in most exam boards, since most (if not all) do have some element of synoptic examination at the end of A2.

But by that time the kids have already been lulled into thinking that science is a series of unrelated 'topics', which isn't the mind set to have.

I don't know about the science syllabus at all, but I went to a lecture a couple of months back on the history of maths in Oxford over the last 40 years (oh what an exciting life I lead!). Stunned to find that the course I sat in 3 years had now been extended to 4 years (and is rebranded as a MMaths). And despite all entrants having 2 Maths A levels the first year is now the syllabus of the old Further Maths A level. The good news seems to be that the lecturer had been quite involved in maths in the primary curriculum and seemed to be hopeful that this trend would reverse over the next 15 years. But I dread to think what the impact has been ont he other science courses over that time (a number of which were already 4 year I think).

My employer (an oil company) wanted to recruit 1,000 science students each year. In 2002 there were 78 graduates in petroleum engineering in the UK. There were a similar number in the Netherlands. The Indian Government promised that the company would be able to select from a pool of at least 10,000 graduates, and they were happy to have the Group's chief scientists involved in the development of the degree courses. That's 1,000 jobs per year (say over 4 years) or 4,000 science based jobs gone for good.

Wow, I'm also agreeing with DC now. what is the world coming to...

The 2ndary school system today just teaches children how to pass exams. There is no deep learning. as MB says, once one module is complete, it falls out of the brain. This is not to say that the children don't study hard, or that the teachers don't teach well. Both of them are doing their bloody best by a completely cock-eyed system that has them all in straight jackets.

My sister-in-law spent half her final year at school retaking her AS modules because she could improve her grades a tiny fraction (she already had As). Surely she could have spent that time actually learning something?

My husband has to teach remedial maths for the first year chemistry students at his university, because even those with Maths A level don't have the necessary knowledge to cope with a science degree.

I lecture in Russian and I have to treat those students who enter my degree course with the A level as "students with some experience of Russian" and often teach a lot of grammar from scratch.

I am agreeing with DC. I think its unrealistic to think that every kid in the land is capable of science. Would you want your dentist or doctor to be someone who resat Biology twice to get the grade?

Why is it unacceptable to use the word "Fail"? If everyone does pass then the qualification becomes meaningless.

It was really sad when people failed all their A-levels. Prehaps they should have never been allowed to attempt A-levels in the first place and done a more appriopate course or got a job. But what is wrong with having a lazy bum fail all their A-levels or GCSEs.

I think that the fact that all the hard physics has been removed from the school curriculum is why very few childen want to study science. Bright children like being stretched and challenged.

medical students resitting to get the right grade is nothing new, they were doing it a generation ago only it was called cramming college and quite a few students had resat the year while those who could not afford it did dentistry, pharmacy, physio or the sciences which needed lower grades

Actually, it's not just maths which has been dumbed down so far that Unis have to run remedial classes for British kids. Chemisry and Physics have this problem as well.
It's one reason thar failing universities like Reading are shutting down whole departmentsl ike Physics.

DC, you really do spout a lot of rubbish. Reading is not a failing univerity (I did not go their btw but a friend of mine did a 3 year postdoc in chemistry there).

Check out its rankings in the last RAE (2001)exercise and you will see that its Physic department scored a 4 - hardly failing (top marks are 5* and 5).

Univerisities are having to close departments like these because they are not able to attract sufficient students to study these subjects.

did not go there

The truth is that there is not a lot that you can do with a physics degree compared to the past. Reading had a very good physics department, but not enough students wanted to go there.

Physics is a very expensive subject to teach well and you need a fairly large department to provide the kit. Bigger departments find it easier to attract research grants. Physics departments like Imperial or Manchester have fabulous facilites.

Nowadays people tend to do more vocational degrees instead of physics degrees. Ie. computer science, electronics, audiology, enviromental sciences etc. Just because the degree isn't called Physics doesn't mean that no physics is studied.

Disagree Frances. There is an awful lot you can do with Physics and the skills you acquire from studying the subject such as analysing data etc.

I studied chemistry and many of colleagues were snapped up by accountancy firms because of their analytical training.

Frances5, I have email from Reading staff saying that it's physics department was shut down because it was crap.
One only has to look at my inbox from Reading "lecturers" to see a place that has really lost the plot big time. Their computer department is just silly, and their so called mathematicians are scraping the barrel.
That would be worrying enough, but the tone of the mail is a political war won by the finance and arts people.

There are a lot of jobs for physicists, banks hire them by the truck load.
Yes, it is more expensive than languages, but almost no one gets to use language degrees.

Their Applied Maths scored a 5 in the last RAE exercise making it one of the top departments in the country. Pure Maths scored 3a making it average. Could it be that those lecturers who emailed have a grudge?

My partner is a physics person - he went through the French system and did an Ecole de commerce, but physics was his thing at school and prépa.

He's a very successful businessman . All those analytical skills...

However much of heavy industry in the UK has gone.

A lot of people who do physics degrees do not get 2.1s infact when I finished my degree in physics a lot of my class had third class honours degrees or less.

A lot of the people who got third class honour degrees in my year had good A-levels had worked reasonally hard. I am not sure what went wrong. I even knew of two people who failed their degree outright. I have a friend who got a first from Imperial College two years ago and she says the same thing happened to her year.

The university that I went to was one of the Russel group of universites and high up in the times league tables.

Someone with modest intelligence (ie. BBC at A-level) is probably better off doing a more vocational degree than physics.

Since people nowadays have to pay to go to university they are being a little bit more careful about what they choose to study.

frances5 - my partner runs a chain of shops. Service industry - very pertinent to the UK.

People like Alan Sugar, Richard Branson left school at 16. They haven't got a degree in physics and are sucessful businessmen as well. Having a physics degree doesn't stop you being a sucessful businessman, but I doult it confers any major advantages.

Anna8888, when did your husband last solve a partial differential equation or needed Maxwell's equations. I expect that he is sucessful businessman because he is bright and prepared to work hard. I am sure he does not use his physics on a day to day basis.

I did use my Physics degree before my son was born. I worked in Radiological Protection. Even then I used very little of the knowledge I gained from my degree. I had to learn the science on the job. The only thing that a Physics degree has given me is the ablity to learn difficult technical material.

However I had to give up work because we moved because of my husband's job after my son was born. I have found it very difficult to get back into work after taking a break for nearly five years.

You can say that about many degrees though. How many peopel are actually using the explicit knowledge they gained when they studied in their careers now? Don't underestimate the tacit knowledge that you acquire from studying for a degree because in my experience, this type of knowledge is vastly under-rated compared to explicit knowledge.