1/2 of all state schools have no girls sitting physics A level

[Himalaya]

Just listening on the radio.

Thoughts? Experience? Ideas?

Well, in my day, practically no one did a mixture of science and arts A levels. Obviously if you were heading for a sciency career you'd still have to do all sciences, but it has to be good for society that people are doing mixtures now.
Liberal artists with some awareness of scientific method has to be a good idea?

Seeker I think it's great that at your dd's school there are girls doing physics for fun, but do they not need some additional maths? There was one person in my A level chemistry class who wasn't doing maths and she needed extra maths help just for the physical chemistry. Lord knows how anyone could have coped with the maths in physics without a lot of extra work in their own time if they weren't doing applied maths as well.

I accept alot may have changed since 1988 but honestly, most of applied maths overlapped directly with the maths required for the mechanics part of physics.

I agree that there wasn't much choice, it was science or arts/humanities, certainly back in the 80s when I did mine. As a result, having chosen the science route at 16, I feel woefully undereducated in humanities and arts.

Maillot I managed Physics without Applied Maths perfectly well, I only did Pure Maths. Probably should have done Pure&Applied with hindsight.

"Seeker I think it's great that at your dd's school there are girls doing physics for fun, but do they not need some additional maths? "

Apparently not- they do have to have an A for GCSE maths though.....

my physics and maths a-levels didn't overlap.
all the maths i needed was taught in the physics lessons as part of the physics.
(acceleration/velocity/ etc)

we didn't have the choice of what maths - our maths teacher said applied maths was basically a waste of time (because you learn all t he concepts in the other subjects).
we all did pure and statistics

One of the reasons physics was taught in the third year of the DCs' US high school was so that the students' maths background would be sufficient, especially for the honours physics course. In that school, if you wanted to do any science at honours level you had to be enrolled in honours maths too.

I was the only person in my A-level maths group not to be doing sciences with it. I thought it a bit of a bonus to be doing applied maths without having to do physics - I got to understand a tiny bit of the physics A-level syllabus without having to do the physics A-level... a shame I didn't get to do any statistics, though, as that would have been very useful... just shows how illogical some of the combinations of subjects can be, depending on what your school offers!

One of the girls who ended up doing medicine from my year in school did bio and chem plus honours maths, history, and French (as well as Irish and English, making up the 7 subject Leaving Cert quota) -- she didn't do physics though that was acceptable as a lab science in Irish universities.

I was one of 3 girls doing physics A level in my class of about 12. Our teacher was quite sexist, I remember one lesson the boys were given experiments to do & us girls were given something to write on overhead projector sheets

I was the only girl in A level physics IIRC, the main problem was that the teacher was a former electronics engineer and I've never had any head for circuitry and semiconductors.

I do think it should be promoted that doing physics is a gateway to many really interesting technical careers such as engineering. When I looked at a career change there were a number of management consulting type opportunities as well (systems analysis?) where they said engineering graduates were favoured as they were both numerate and had good problem solving. You never have any idea of those career paths at age 16.

I suspect a lot of girls imagine that physics A level would only lead to being a physics teacher or some kind of white-coat researcher (which of course is worthy in itself). I would not have had any awareness of engineering were it not for the Girls into Engineering promotions being run in the 1980s (Insight courses, anyone?) but as soon as I saw it I knew that was what I wanted to do.

I think there's a hangover of attitudes from the British class system (social not academic!) which says that technical subjects are not what a gentleman would do, and certainly not a lady. I mean, it leads to trade, not quite the thing.

Whereas in Europe, there's a tradition of scientists and yes, even engineers, being intellectuals as well. So if kids are doing mixed subjects in school, maybe there could be a move in that direction.

All the science teachers at our school were women. I had quite a few relatives (including a woman) who were engineers, a school which pushed science and a family with several women scientists in it and I was still undecided... I felt I was quite good at science but even better at other things and wanted to be the best at whatever I did... Maybe I had the opposite issue of most people and reacted against the feeling I was being pushed in one direction, which in my case was towards science and engineering. These days, I think I might rather have enjoyed it after all! Some people are just too bloody minded...

That's amazing, rabbit - all of them?!! Was that a girls' school?

My little one is so curious about the world, and I am so grateful that I am now in a position to answer her questions sensibly.

She knows that humans came from monkeys (though I am pretty sure I said apes, unless I wasn't speaking English at the time, which is quite probable, come to think of it), and birds from dinosaurs, and that the stars are still there during the day, we just can't see them because the sun is so bright, and that the Sun is a star, it just looks so big because it's so close.

I want her to make her own way, and do and become whatever is best for her, without being trammeled by other people's stupid ideas.

So I hope I won't be too disappointed and condemning if she ends up wanting to be a hairdresser or a fashion model...

Yes, it was a girls' school...

I suppose it was a silly question, rabbitstew!

I went to mixed schools (and so does my daughter, now, since a few weeks ago), and I have never had anything to do wth single sex schools, of either variety. I suppose I assumed, without really thinking about it, that they would generally employ teachers of both sexes.

My crap Physics teacher was female and the good one was male, so it just goes to show you can't generalise.

This was in Scotland, so both would have had to have Physics degrees in order to teach it.

The male teachers mainly did the arty subjects .

nickel - I think your maths teacher had a point. Its bizarre that most physical science students (in my day) had done very little stats at school - we did a stats course in first year of chemistry degree, the first thing they did in physics subsid was measuring straws as a simple exercise in reporting results properly with standard deviations - we never did that at school. The people doing biology and chemistry usually did maths&stats single A level.
Wouldn't a double award covering pure, some applied and stats make more sense?

Of course its not just scientists... when you think of all the misrepresentation of scientific results in newspapers, serious miscarriages of justice etc stats should be a prerequisite for lawyers, journos, economists, politicians...

Sorry, I digress but maybe this also plays into the narrowness of A-level choices, Arts or STEM subjects.

My maths A level in the late 90s was a combination of pure and applied, and the applied was a mix of mechanics and stats. I am a lawyer and it often terrifies me how little lawyers, including employment judges (my area) often know about stats and how easily they are swayed by stats that aren't actually very persuasive if you understand them. I strongly believe that A level students should have some mandatory core courses - not necessarily even examined, just covered - in important elements like that.

Yes, I still don't understand how not one person in her defence team said 'hang on, those stats treat them as independent events. We don't know if there is a linked, unidentified cause'.

I agree kim, so tragic.