Curriculum Programme

Science issues

Tomorrow’s scientists and scientific literacy
Author: Peter Campbell

LINK: www.publications.parliament.uk

The Lords held a debate about science education in schools on 3 May 2007. As the extracts below demonstrate, the House is both well-informed about real challenges faced in schools and thoughtful about recent education initiatives.

First, here are two extracts from Baroness Walmsley’s speech in the House of Lords on 3 May 2007:
‘We have two clear tasks when teaching science: to provide a rigorous foundation for the young professional scientists of tomorrow and to produce scientifically literate young citizens. In relation to the first group, there are so many opportunities available to bright young people, and we need to attract the brightest of them into science rather than other often better paid jobs. Science subjects are perceived as difficult with the result that they are avoided by many. Therefore, we need to make the subject interesting and relevant. Coincidentally, these are exactly the same criteria needed to attract the second group—the scientifically literate citizen.

‘This morning I visited Haggerston School in Hackney where the new 21st century science GCSE is being taught. I thank the girls, head, teachers and the school secretary for making me so welcome. I saw classes taking the applied science programme and the additional science. Both classes were engaged and interested. It was clear that they did plenty of practical work, mainly inside the laboratory. Both courses are very discursive so I worry a little about students for whom English is not their mother tongue. However, the teaching vehicles were varied and interesting and I had no qualms about the scientific rigour of both courses.’

Baroness O’Neill, a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation, observed:
‘… the most remarkable thing is the degree of agreement among colleagues with long experience of science and science education that we now need a broad education throughout the school years. The time was when those of us in the humanities or social sciences would groan a little because so many scientists seemed to think that A-levels were an educational gold standard, although of course they required even the brightest to narrow their focus to three or four subjects, which, for physical scientists, were sometimes all too closely related. Now we know that scientists need languages as well as English. We also know all too bitterly that social scientists and many in the humanities need mathematics. Indeed, we have real difficulties of capacity and quality of capacity in those areas in this country.’

Later in the debate, Lord Adonis made this contribution endorsing the approach adopted in course such as GCSE Twenty First Century Science and AS Science for Public Understanding:
‘Moreover science education is not just about producing scientists, any more than teaching knowledge of the past is about producing historians. A scientifically literate society means a society of people better qualified to make sensible choices about their health, to reflect upon the benefits and potential perils of technological advances, to appreciate the environmental challenges ahead and, as my noble friend Lord Winston emphasised, to appreciate the ethical dimension to all that they seek to do.’

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