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Original poster

If you have an interest in Education and particularly Science please read.....

75 replies

Beetroot · 09/01/2008 15:37

Can I ask for you help?

If you interested in Science and Education would you send an email to Jim Knight MP, Secretary of State for DSCF. ? or perhaps it might be good if you send to local MP and get them to contact the Jim Knight or ideally do both!!

A template for this email is below - obviously it would be perfect if you changed it slightly so that they are not all the same.

Dear

?I am aware that there has been a problem for a number of years with inspiring young people around the ages of 11-14 with science at school. This is having a knock on effect on numbers taking ?A? level science subject especially Maths and Physics and therefore in University and Industry uptake for Graduates. Please can you let me know what action the Govt is taking with support for specific projects to try to address this issue at this Key Stage 3 level. ?

Jim knight?s email is: [email protected]

Thank you for you time

OP posts:
Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:11

The problem is, though, that the GCSE content needs to be criticised, if we are going to improve science education in the UK.

Extra resources and motivational road shows would be wonderful, but at the moment I have no 'spare' lessons in the KS3 curriculum. Any time we spend outside of school means that already over crowded lessons have to be crammed into even shorter periods of time. I don't have a single lesson that is a 'repeat', no time for revision.

I honestly feel that what you are organising is an excellent idea, and I fully support it, but unless the GCSEs are improved it is going to be of limited use. You will get the kids motivated, and then they go back to learning 'factoids' in the lesson.

We need a holistic approach to this, or it is a case of putting an excellent sticking plaster on a gaping wound

Tamum · 09/01/2008 18:17

I am sorry to keep raising objections, but wouldn't the emails need to mention this roadshow though? We have so many of these events here- there's the Scifun roadshow, workshops on things like Brain Awareness week every year, the Science Festival, Physics roadshows run by Heriot Watt, workshops run by our postgrads in schools on the Researchers in Residence scheme.... Honestly, there is absolutely no shortage of events, it's the curriculum that is the issue. My MP would want to know how the workshop you are proposing is different from all those already funded by the Scottish Executive, I think, so an email would need to be very carefully worded and more explicit.

Original poster
Beetroot · 09/01/2008 18:18

MB - We did a survey or 300 schools from all around the country and your response is unusual but I do take it on board.

OP posts:
Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:18

You are right Tamum, the curriculum is the central issue.

And the basic ethos that we just get the kids to pass the exam, rather than learn how to think.

Original poster
Beetroot · 09/01/2008 18:20

Tamum - don't worry about it. If you don't feel you can write then it is fine.

OP posts:
cat64 · 09/01/2008 18:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:23

If you look at the Times Ed website (take care there are lunatics round there! ) you will see that the current new science GCSes are help in very little regard.

None of my collegues think that there are an improvemnt on the old one. None of the science teachers that I know in other schools thinks they are either.

Even factoring out the inertia and resistance to change that many of us may have , the curriculum isn't see as good enough by the teachers that I know.

It doesn't make the bright kids think enough. It doesn't give us enough time to work with the lower attainment children.

I teach a class of year 10s who are expected to discuss the Human Genome project, when most of them haven't had enough time to really understand the structure of DNA. How can they meaningfully discuss something that they don't understand? And the answer is that they can't. So we did it via coaching and role play. Which is interesting, but it isn't science.

Original poster
Beetroot · 09/01/2008 18:25

MB - I am sure you are right. What I meant was that ALL of the schools who responded and that was the majority - said they would defiantly want to use this type of resource.

OP posts:
Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:28

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd love to use it.

But we simply don't have the time to make the most of it. To have maximum effect you'd need to build up to this, to plan lessons around it, to have lessons after it, discussing what was seen etc.

I simply don't have the curriculum time.

I wish I did, but I don't.

the only time that we could sensibly fit something like this in would be at the end of KS3, byt which time many of them are switched off

Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:31

Because if you can't get the kids to think about what they see and experience, it just becomes entertainment. the kids just want the bangs and flashes and will switch off when you try to explain them. All tying back into one of my first points that we are training children to be passive consumers of science, not active learners.

Sorry , I'm a bit passionate about this.

throckenholt · 09/01/2008 18:31

I haven't read the whole thread yet - but just got through MB's first few comments. It makes me so SAD that science is being screwed up so badly in the school system.

I am a science graduate,have a PhD in science, DH is a research scientist. I support (computing) science post grads at university and can definitely agree that the students don't know how to think for themselves and don't know how to apply things to slightly different situations.

And I can honestly look back and ponder that I could do those things - and wonder why on earth teaching and curriculum has been changed so that they can't do them now. Surely those are some of the most useful bits ?

And tying science together and applying to other areas is what makes it interesting and fun. Teaching things as discrete modules - tested and passed but not related directly to anything else (and so probably promptly forgotten once the test is completed) is fairly useless.

I despair at where and why this has been allowed to go wrong for so many years and wonder how and when it will be changed ?

We need good scientists in this country - now more than ever.

Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:32

FWIW throcket, I was a research scientist before i became a science teacher, and it breaks my hreat too.

Original poster
Beetroot · 09/01/2008 18:33

throckenholt - please email then

OP posts:
throckenholt · 09/01/2008 18:33

MB - how do you cope with teaching within those constraints - don't you get demoralised with it ? Don't you wish you could generate that spark of interest and excitement ?

I don't think I could do it - it would frustrate me so much.

WendyWeber · 09/01/2008 18:36

I just asked DS2 -(Y10) how he is finding GCSE Science; I had to fish a lot because he didn't know what I was after but he says yes, it is very boring, and that his Chemistry teacher has been complaining about the curriculum. (Physics teacher is Mr Boring anyway so prob doesn't notice)

There is less practical work now and Chemistry is all about recycling and the damage we're doing to the world etc?

He is extremely good at science (level 7-8 in SATs and As in internal exams) but there's no chance he'll be doing it to A Level - but whether there would be if it was more inspiring I couldn't say. He's just gone out, I'll ask again when he comes back - beety/DH/mb what should I ask him?

Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:37

I do love the subject, and I'm quite passionate about it. I also rather love the kids (in a wholesome motherly way ), well most of them anyway!

And you can make them love the subject too. You just end up a bit knackered at the end of the day

What worries me is that we have so little time, the concept that an experiment should allow them to make a conclusion sort of passes them by. they see experiments as fun, motivational, exciting.....which of course they all are, but the ultimate point of an experiment is to test a prediction, and most of them simply don't do this. Because that would requite thought, and we never let the poor little buggers have the time to think.

TellusMater · 09/01/2008 18:40

And even when you do coursework, which is supposed to be all about hypothesis testing, to jump through the marking hoops it is better to avoid real experimentation, and go for the same old same old, where they are just confirming what they know, not what they predict.

Blandmum · 09/01/2008 18:41

oh god.....course work!

That has gone in the new GCSEs. we assess their practical ability in class practicals

TellusMater · 09/01/2008 18:42

So even that nod to hypothesis testing is out the window then?

Can't say I'm sorry to see the back of it, but still...

Original poster
Beetroot · 09/01/2008 18:58

bump

OP posts:
Tamum · 09/01/2008 19:00

This is all very interesting- I have to say that I see students as no less well prepared than, say, 10-15 years ago. Maybe it's different in biology. I also feel strongly that I was interested in science at school in spite of the teaching, not because of it, but again perhaps that's because the curriculum was so much better then that it was able to inspire us in the absence of good teaching?

Blandmum · 09/01/2008 19:14

I think that we were more forgiving of duller stuff!

I also think that the spiral curriculum that we have in KS3 is a great mistake. In theory it should mean that every year we build on a child's understanding in incremental steps. In fact we have to go over all the same things, yet again, because the kids have forgotten stuff in the interveining year.

So it means that we go over stuff again, and again and again.

there are fewer magical moments when the kids really understand a topic. Which for the brightest kids is a real bore.

TellusMater · 09/01/2008 19:17

Ah yes. Photosynthesis. But we've done that

Original poster
Beetroot · 09/01/2008 19:17

and perhaps these live presentations, with exciting experiments are jsut the thing to help get stuff to stc=ick in the kids brains.

OP posts:
Tamum · 09/01/2008 19:18

Speak for yourself mate- I was the one sighing theatrically and examining my nails at the back of the class

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