Secondary school teachers -- your opinions, please!

[frogs]

I nearly hijacked the teachers and homework thread, since I can see you're all there, and then decided to start up a new one.

We're starting to look at secondary schools for dd1 (Year 5) and visited an open day last night. It's a girls' VA comprehensive, four-form entry, with good results for an average intake (rough part of London).

The modern languages was really buzzy and exciting (specialist language college, offering Mandarin and Japanese), CDT also great, music and art ditto.

My real concern was the science: labs clearly not redone since the fifties, glass-fronted cabinets full of equipment of the same vintage, no posters or displays, no computers in the labs, two middle-aged teachers who did fairly standard science party tricks to get a wow from the kids (the light sabre thing, the one where you shake the polymer and it goes blue), but didn't give us any actual information.

What are your labs like? What do you do to make science seem interesting and relevant to the kids? Frankly, the idea of being taught in these labs made me want to fall asleep. How reliable do you think these first impressions are likely to be, and does it matter?

Interesting. I tend to think a good school is good in ALL areas, not just a few. A good school (IMO) will also make a big effort on open evenings to show the school off at its best.
If a department fails to do this, I would agree with you in questioning how interesting and motivating lessons would be. No displays? No information? Old equipment? Sounds like a neglected area to me. I'd keep looking but don't rule it out. Do you know parents who send their children to the school already? I'd try and find out more before making final decision.

ooh cant talk about labs soprry, not my subject

Can you ask the school for extra information about their approach to science lessons?

For me I would think that ok the labs are not the best but every lesson for me at school was not in a state of the art buzzy place with exciting teachers and one of the lessons was that I had to learn to apply myself and concentrate (I lurve science though!!) And science teachers are either completely into science and a bit mad but very personable or completely into science and slightly detached from the rest of the world!!

I wouldn't worry to much about the age of the labs and equipment. Many schools have that problem due to budgets, etc. However, lack of wall displays I would be. Why were they none? Why didn't they have posters and pupils work up? That would be a slight concern.

What are the school's science results like - atKS3 SATs and GCSE level (and higher)? The school will have this information, and the KS3 results will be published on the net - look up your LEA's website and do a search, and compare it with some other local schools.

What were the teachers like? Did they try and engage the children? Did they get them interested?

I know that many school labs are underfunded and dated frankly, so are many labs in universities. We have plenty of equipment of similar vintage in our (university) lab that is still in use for teaching but we back that up by having contemporary software-based resources as well.

I was concerned that there were no computers in the school labs; the lack of displays concerned me as well. I would have thought posters, or copies of newspaper or magazine articles on scientific topics, or even info on science-based careers would make it seem a bit more 'happening'. I thought the teachers were pretty uninspiring as well, tbh.

Interestingly, the exam results for the buzzy departments were all skewed to the higher end, while the science results were pretty much normally distributed, with a long tail at the lower end. Hmm. I really wanted to like this school, but this has really put me off.

HMB is a secondary school science teacher. She'll be at work now,, but bump it up later on this evening and she may well be around and see this. Sure she may be able to help you more.

DH is Head of chemistry and I have just asked him what are on the walls of his labs. He said that he gave each of the younger class a different element to design a poster about. So each child for a homework project reseached an element and made a really colourful and interesting poster. They were then arranged in the form of a periodic table covering 2 walls. He says for open day which are held twice a year on saturday mornings, he gets the younger classes to demonstrate experiments and also to do experiments that the visiting children can take part in. The reason for using the younger ones is that the visiting children can then identify better with ones just a little older than themselves.

The labs have all been redone it has been a rolling programme over several years.

Years ago he says that visiting parents have said that there is a big differnce between primary walls and their walls displays etc. Now though it looks far more exciting and interesting.

Each of them use a class laptop which are networked.

HTH

Hi, I've been in work today, so I have just seen this thread.

I wouldn't be worried at the older equipment as, to be honest the science you do at secondary isn't that 'cutting edge' and you can do most things with the odd test tube, power pack and plant!

What worried me was the lack of posters on the wall, that argues that there might not be a lot of more 'inovative' teaching going on.

For example this week my sixth form have been making some rather fine 3-D posters of plant and animal cells. While they do this, which they enjoy, they discuss the science of what they are making IYSWIM. In the rest of my lab I have anti smoking posters, element posters, sewage treatment posters, photosynthesis posters and hikus about animal cloning! And all of these were done byt the kids.

Out labs were done in the 1990s and to be honest we don't have enough ICT, but we still manage to teach some good science. Not having posters made me 'worry' a bit.

HTH

Oh and not that it counts for that much, our department got a very good in the recent ofsted (inpector said, soon to be excellent), compared to the school as a whole getting a satisfactory.

What did the ofsted report say about science teaching?

To put a different point of view:
I am a primary school teacher and find displays hard but it doesn't mean I don't teach exciting lessons. Also these teachers may not be the ones teaching your child, they may be retiring soon, they may be covering maternity leave etc? The science labs may be about to be re-done, there could have been a leaking roof in the lab which affected the displays? Why not go and talk to the head about your concerns - if nothing else she/he may give the science teachers a kick up the arse and get them to sort their displays out!

Can't wait to get my teeth into this one later as I'm an ex-science teacher so am allowed to view from both sides!! Damn tea-time.....

Oh and to put things into perspective I am not good at posters myself. I just put up the work the kids have done. This validates their work. It doesn't look stunning in my lab but it does look interesting and it also shows a. that the kids are working well and I value their work and the b. the lab is theirs.

OK -waiting on the veg!
I would express my concerns with the absence of wall displays. This surely must have an effect on the enthusiasm of both the teaching staff and therefore the students. If they are disillusioned about their subject then the results may be poor. I would check out the ofsted report for the quality of teaching and the results. I wouldn't be too bothered about the absence of the modern desks too much - most are rubbish quality and don't last half as long as the old desks tbh. Science departments are notoriously underfunded - it was one of my pet hates about the job, the fact that I would put in my own cash so that I could teach a resourced lesson . I would mention your concerns to the head of department, it may be that they are due for a refurb.....or a miracle injection of cash?!

Thanks, everyone for your input.

Apparently the head teacher of the school is new in post, and is coming as a guest speaker to our primary school's Y5/6 parents' evening, so hopefully I'll have the chance to raise it then. The head of science was one of the people who did the v. uninspiring presentation, so I don't hold out much hope there...

Out of interest, is it usual for state schools to offer three separate sciences at GCSE, or just dual award science? The other school we're going to look at has specialist science status and does offer three separate science GCSEs, although less than a quarter of the cohort seem to take this route. Presumably kids who've done them separately have a headstart at A-level as they've done 33% more science, or have I misunderstood how it works?

It is fairly unusual to offer all three sciences but not only science collages offer it. The last school I was in was Performing arts and they offered it as a twilight subject (ie the kids did 2 GCSE's worth in normal lessons and make up te third in lessons after school). I now teach in a language collage and we offer double science, separate sciences (ie biol chem and Phys) and also double applied science which is good for the more 'practical' students.

TBH I wouldn't make the choice based on triple science. I am teaching an amazing doubel science set this year (in fact two of them) and they are not missing out on that much. The last two modules of the single science edexcell biology are rather dull IMHO

HTH

My school is a technology college and offers the dual science and three separates to those who want to / can cope with that amount of science. A small minority do the triple. They usually are the ones who go on to do Science A level. My understanding is that the "better" universities would much rather Science students had the 3 separate sciences but I may be wrong now, they change their policies so much.

Not a science teacher BUT can comment on our labs at school. Been refurbished recently but up until last year they were prehistoric. MOdern now. Young science dept as well in terms of staff- fairly exciting subject at our school with all sorts of wall displays around the school, morning assembly experiments etc etc... Good results as well...

DH says very few state schools offer separate science and although you are right to say that students who hace done sep sc. do have a head start for A level it shouldn't matter much as the A level syllabus is written assuming students have only dual award to GCSE

DH school is a private one where just over ½ the boys do separate science but many who have done dual award go on to do A level successfully.

HTH

I don't think that the uni's mind so much, since you covereeverything again at AS/A2 level at a lot more detail anyway. It might be an anvantage if your child is going to sit one science A level and the others in different areas. But you your child wants to do all three sciences it doesn't matter so much.

It cann have an effect on the sort of kids that your child will be studying with. In some schools the creme de la crme study all three. For some odd reason the best of our kids do double science. My top two sets are red hot, and great fun to teach. Nothing predicted less than an A for any of them. I feel quite guilty taking the cash when I teach them.

DH says that they do not have computers in the labs because of the gases given off by the experiments. They would be corroded inside, they do have computers in the chemistry rooms that are for teaching and so that is why the boys use laptops in the labs.

They use fume cupboards with extractor fans for any dangerous gases and the labs are ventilated.

All schools will have to have fume cupboard for dangerous experiments (in fact we do very very few until sixth form) for H & S reasons. No option.