Nuffield Curriculum Centre

Nuffield Working with Science

Organizer
1970s: Ken Wild
1980s: Ken Wild, Chris Elliott, John Taylor

Background
Following the raising of the school leaving age in 1972, there was a demand for a one-year post-16 science programme. In the mid 1970s, a very creative team produced a flexible set of work-related modules which were published in a low-cost format. This was Nuffield’s first foray into applied and work-related science.

Aims and approach
The aim was to provide resources that could be the basis for a wide variety of post-16 science courses for young people staying on in school or college but not likely to take an A-level course.

The chosen topics were very wide ranging. There were maxi-units with titles such as: Brewing, Football, Pollution, Psychology and Enterprise. There were mini-units on topics such as: Boomerangs, Stage make-up and Dowsing.

The first series was published in 1977 - 78.

Assessment
The first round of units was designed for use with the Certificate of Extended Education (CEE)

Twenty five of the units were revised and updated for a new edition published in 1986 to meet the aims and objectives of the Certificate of Pre-Vocational Education (CPVE). The revised Tutors’ Handbook showed how the units could be used to meet the assessment criteria for CPVE.

Impact
The Nuffield Working with Science project’s resources were ahead of their time and were not widely adopted largely because the CEE did not take off in science. Similarly the CPVE had a short life and the classes were seldom supervised by science teachers.

The Manchester group of developers, with John Taylor, had been working in parallel as a ROSLA (raising of teh school leaving age) group and as part of the Nuffield team. Their ideas and materials also appeared as the modules of Science at Work with a commercial publisher. As a course for low-performing 14-16 year olds this was a huge success. At first it underpinned many CSE courses and later GCSE courses.