Problems Communicating With: Students

Students and I very often have different conceptions of what Sixth Form study is about.

In my mind it is about getting to grips with a subject at a conceptual level, understanding the links and implications, and learning enough facts and skills to be able to be able to demonstrate that understanding.

The bulk of my students naturally see the lessons and exams as tasks to complete with as little effort as possible. I say naturally, because that is how they have been trained for years to see their education: bite-sized chunks to reproduce in modularised exams since primary school, ideas that are so simple that a bright pupil can learn without any effort and a less bright one by rote memorisation. These students who have made it onto my Physics course have been successful in that environment, and it is often hard for them to adapt to the holistic demands of A level that are more suited to their abilities as clever sixteen-year-olds.

The Paradox of Hard Work

The biggest problem I find with students is not that, under pressure for the first time, they don't work, but that they don't make the effort to learn. I get asked by parents why their child is not getting the grade As in A level that they got at GCSE the year or two before. Their child, they tell me, is spending hours working at home to improve their performance, downloading past papers from the exam board and doing more and more exam practice.

The reason, perhaps, is that they have been spoiled. All their teachers for the previous three years were working under the Damocles Sword of national exams, the results of which are naively used to rank schools, and to judge whether teachers deserve their annual pay rise. Many (but by no means all — a topic for a future post) know that teaching the subject is the best way to produce deep learning. But everyone ends up teaching to the test, with weeks to months every year taken up with exam practice and mock exams. There are exam papers for homework and past exam questions for revision exercises and class tests.

Eat, drink and breathe the exams. Technique is everything.

So of course, in my classes, the first time a topic gets difficult, students resort to one of three actions: conscientious study; blinkers or extreme hope.

Conscientious Study

The recommended route to success. It involves a full commitment to learning what is taught and thinking about it in a structured way, supported by a revision schedule and a small amount of exam preparation work. Rarely attempted.

Blinkers

The second action is worrying, since this represents a large group of rather well motivated students who expect to be successful. Mathematically strong students, finding grades slipping as the course progresses, decide that what is needed, and what worked last year, is to practise answering exam questions. Again and again and again. After an initial boost to test scores, improvements stall and further efforts produce diminishing returns and the pressure to `work harder'. Problem solving skills (really, just learning a few standard techniques) are shallow and can not remove the need for deep conceptual understanding.

Extreme Hope

The most common action by far is to do nothing and hope that everything will sink in eventually. Students are discomfited by the nagging feeling that they ought to be doing something, but prefer to do something else out of class. This has ever been so with students, and there is little to be done short of compulsion. My own College is caught between an official policy, of encouraging students to be responsible for their own learning, and the need to hold teachers accountable for every student's under-performance. We tell them to take responsibility, then deny them their just deserts and their chance to learn a life lesson.

The more they fail, the harder they hope.

But we can't let them fail, can we?
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College Building Programme Halted

The LSC, the government funding body for Sixth Form Colleges, has announced that they will continue to fund just eight of the pending College building project to completion. This leaves 79 Colleges, including my own, that have previously been approved, with a further 65 advanced proposals in limbo, as almost the entire national rebuilding project is put on the back burner. The press release ends with:

We will consult urgently, and as quickly as possible, with the AoC (Association of Colleges) and other key sector organisations on proposals and a strategy for prioritisation for future projects. These proposals and the future management of the programme will also reflect the conclusion of Sir Andrew Foster’s current review.

The government's response to a funding shortfall, then, is order a second inquiry before the first one is fully over, simply to sort a possible future strategy and, I expect, to keep it all going until everyone forgets what the worry was about.

The Association of Colleges has issued a brief initial response, here, but they are unlikely to be able to influence government delays. Many of the plans involved the colleges raising millions of pounds each from bank loans and selling off land for house-building — both sources that have dried up considerably in the recession.
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For Those Who Can't Find Anything Better - Teach

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has declared that the UK

… will educate the next generation of world class scientists; and that to do so we will work towards all pupils having access to single subject science teaching - with a guarantee that 90 per cent of all state schools will offer this within the next five years.

But, isn't there a national shortage of Physics teachers? I know it is hard to tell since the government stopped recording Physics teacher shortages a few years ago (they do report a 0.9% vacancy rate in science posts, since schools top up with Biology specialists), but the Centre for Education and Employment Research says in this report that a quarter of secondary schools don't have even one Physics teacher.

But, Gordy has a plan! As our industrial base implodes in the recession, all those engineers will be approached, "guaranteed", to train them as Physics and Maths teachers. "Come here my lovelies, teaching is better than the dole!"

After a decade of promising that all the education problems will be solved (remember "education, education, education"?), nearly all school physics departments, where they exist, are still hugely understaffed, more Physics teachers are still leaving than joining schools each year and perhaps 30% are due to retire in the next decade.

Recruiting a few down at heel industrial workers will not even work as a short term fix for the existing problems. There are better ways to tempt Physics qualified people into teaching than simply waiting for companies to go bust (see How to Recruit a Physics Teacher), but the government and unions will never take the necessary step of letting schools compete freely in the jobs market and offer attractive packages for people with shortage skills.
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Problems Communicating With: Maths Teachers

Now, you might think that there is nothing closer in colleges than Maths and Physics teachers, especially since at A Level they often both teach Mechanics to the same students at the same time. I support the Institute of Physics's suggestion that the shortage of Physics teachers could be eased if trainee teachers could train as joint Physics/Maths teachers, since many physicists are put off teaching by the requirement that they teach Biology as a general science teacher in schools. However, there are problems of incompatible approaches to be overcome, as I have discovered myself, since the Physics department in my college is part of the Maths department (moved from Science to even up team sizes).

Culture Difference

There is a problem of culture that has grown over the years and is transmitted to each new generation of teachers in the training colleges. Physics and Maths teaching have become isolated from each other, with no cross-fertilisation. New styles have been habituated in each subject specialism and they have now become radically different breeds. "Oh, we don't have time for applications!" said one Maths teacher, when questioned.

How can they be so different?

Physics teachers are trained and employed in a science context, with a focus on conceptual understanding, measurement, modelling and context. Mathematics teachers have become divorced from applications and have turned inwards. This is not necessarily undesirable, but many of their students (most, if you look at the Maths-Mechanics classes) study Physics and intend to enter Physics related degree courses. The Maths Departments' focus on narrowly defined problems leading to routine processing for a solution encourages students to rely on learnt techniques. This works fine for standard problems, but it is a distraction when dealing with unfamiliar problem types, which require a grasp of fundamental principles.

Student Coping Mechanism

Many students cope well with the differences, but a few always respond to difficulties badly: home study consists of learning the problem solving technique recipes and cramming for tests. When the unlearned concepts become a cause for declining scores, the response is to do more of the same. The next step is to request extra past papers to hone their technique, but this can lead to frustration as scores fail to improve and hour after hour are consumed chasing the wrong target. It is regular chore telling parents during meetings that their offspring are working terribly hard, but at the wrong things.

Now this is by no means the sole fault of Maths teachers, since this style of learning works well for GCSE Physics, but it is unfortunate that it also works well for A Level Maths. Many have never needed to get to grips with Physics concepts.

Incoherent Mathematics

The strangest difference I have come upon is that algebra is carried out using a bastardised version of quantity calculus. Quantity calculus, or quantity algebra, is the coherent system for dealing with physical quantities mathematically, as specified in the SI. Unit symbols are treated as mathematical entities, and the inclusion of units in workings is invaluable for helping students appreciate the physical basis of calculation, as well as helping them to spot errors when unexpected units appear with the solution.

My Maths teacher colleagues follow the exam board guidance, and claim to use SI units, but the units are all they use. A maths problem will specify, for example, that 'v = velocity in m/s', so the formula presented is unit specific, while in Physics the equations are valid for any coherent set of units, i.e. 'v = velocity'. The weight of a 300 kg mass is labelled as '300g' in a Maths problem, but with g defined as an acceleration, this makes the weight a simple multiple of an acceleration, not a force.

In Physics lessons, I expect my students to write '300 kg x g' to preserve the unit dimension. My colleagues told me that units were omitted because they caused confusion, with grams mixed up with the gravitational g, etc. Of course, there is no actual indication that such mix-ups actually happen. An additional inconsistency, Maths teachers are happy to write '1 mi = 1.6 km', without accepting that this means 'mi/km = 1.6', as this would give the units meaning outside the narrow unit specifications of variables.

Separated By A Shared Language

Maths and Physics teachers, although ostensibly sharing a love of the quantitative, speak different languages. Physics requires an understanding of principles and the importance of physical quantities, while mathematics allows the flourishing of technique over understanding, and introduces a hodge-podge of half-correct ideas that do not even give lip service to the needs of future scientists and engineers to use standard, coherent notation and techniques.
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School Does Anything for Cash

Our local primary school has taken a big loan to fund a new staffroom without knowing where the money was going to come from, and it is now struggling to make ends meet.

As a Voluntary Aided school the governors are responsible for paying ten percent of any capital expense, but decided to apply for a grant from the local authority first. The loan to cover the remainder needs servicing, and parents are being squeezed.

Prospective parents are invited to fill in direct debit forms along with the applications. Existing parents are charged for lessons for which, at most, voluntary contributions could be asked. Entry to see the Christmas plays was by bought ticket only. Children were even told, illegally, that they would be withdrawn from swimming lessons if parents didn't ante up.

As the headteacher told me in a private communication, the shool was concerned that if parents knew that payments were entirely voluntary, many wouldn't pay up.

Most tastelessly, though, the poorest families have had five pound vouchers dangled in front of them, theirs if they apply for free school meals. The free meals don't have to be eaten, the newsletter goes on, just claimed. The school can then claim an extra 70 pounds from the government's 'School Standards Grant (Personalisation)', which normally pays just five pounds per child at the school.

So the school knows there are some families on social security who haven't registered for whatever reason. But to try to bribe such people, with just five pounds when they have been asked to pay for a free state eduuation, is crass.

The school must think parents can be bought cheaply. I know running a school is costly, but the schools are there as a service to parents and children. Families should not be seen simply as funding units.
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New Tory Education Policies

Michael Gove, Conservative Party education policy wonk, has an alternative to the government's feeble response to the specialist teacher shortage.

Over the last decade, Labour has solved the Physics teacher shortage by making Biology teachers teach Physics, then declaring that there isn't a science teacher recruitment problem. (see Biologists Shouldn't Teach Physics) The acute shortage of maths trained teachers in primary schools is magically reversed by paying the more numerate teachers to attend a two or three week course in their summer break, returning to their schools as 'maths qualified'. Brilliant, but at the same time pathetic.

The long term answer, or course, is to allow some freedom in the market, and pay more for the teacher who has the shortage skills. Gove suggests that head teachers should be allowed to do just that, although the unions have a strong interest in preventing any local pay agreements - national pay bargaining is their most valued power. Opening more schools that can independently set pay rates could work, and Gove seems to be suggesting that, but the new City Academies have been free of council control for years, and I don't see evidence that pay is varied to ease recruitment difficulties.

It will be hard encouraging Heads to make use of such a power though, as many don't see specialisms as important. Why would a primary head teacher, of a school with respectable maths test results, want to spend more to recruit a maths specialist? Specialists have never been part of the primary scene, and it would be seen as an insult to the existing generalist teachers, especially if paid differently.

Independent schools, however, do take specialist skills seriously, and many vary pay rates — if government really wants to close the education gap between independent and state schools, then they must bite the pay bullet.
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Vorderman to Lead Inquiry into Maths Teaching

Carol Vorderman has been appointed by Conservative Party leader David Cameron to lead an inquiry into the state of Mathematics teaching. Yup, that's right, the TV presenter with a knack for mental arithmetic is going to be passing judgment on how children do maths in school and on examination standards in England.

Why does Dave think Vorderman is qualified for the job? She famously only managed a third class degree in engineering, she has shown her disdain for independent research by publicly joining the anti-MMR lobby and is a fully paid-up snake oil salesman flogging worthless detox diets and and dodgy financial products.

She said:

Maths is critically important to the future of this country but Britain is falling behind the best performing countries.

But the TIMMS study has England high up the international league table and climbing. Given her history, though, we can expect Vorderman to have a disdain for the normal rules for evidence.

Quite what influence her report will have when it is finally published, who can tell. But, if Jamie Oliver's foray into education is anything to go by, one can only hope it will be quietly put on the back burner.
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Government "to bust myth of 'elitist' science"

The Government's science awareness campaign is a pointless waste of money for everyone, except for the government itself, which will claim it is doing something to secure our technological future. The UK's Science Minister, Lord Drayson, has decided that too few students are taking up science or engineering careers because they think that science is too hard and elitist:

"Continued success in science is vital to our future - and yet there is still the perception among many of our people that science is too clever for them or elitist in some way.

"We must challenge myths like these if we are to build a prosperous, science-literate society, able to tackle the difficult issues that modern science presents and work them through to create the jobs and growth of the future.

So, his solution is to tell young people that science isn't hard or elitist! So there, job done.

Strangely, the press release announcing the Science [So What? So Everything] campaign links to the 2008 Public Attitudes to Science survey, which showed that awareness of, and attitudes, to science was high and increasing. So why the expensive awareness campaign?

The real issue of course, is that, in spite of the fact that young people are aware of the importance of science in their lives, fewer are choosing is as a career.

Let me suggest what the government ought to be doing to encourage the uptake of science careers:

• Keep science lessons difficult (for politicians, read 'challenging'.) Talented students are attracted by elite, high status careers, such as medicine. They will not be tempted by science if it is made too accessible. I want scientists and engineers to be clever — they should be seen as an elite.
  
  
• The government should properly fund blue sky science, rather than focus on research with short term medical or environmental benefits. The stingy approach to astronomy and particle physics funding over recent months was very off-putting.
  
  
• OFSTED should be reigned in and retrained: the education watchdog's penchant for fashionable trends, such as interactive whiteboards, computers and 'learning styles' has diverted attention from the skills teacher should be developing, i.e the one research has shown to work.
  
  
• Encourage talented, able scientists to become teachers by making teaching high status (and, yes, elitist). The UK's science education is already one of the best in the world, as I posted on before, but most Physics teachers will retire in the next decade.

An awareness campaign just allows the government to claim it is doing something, without having to actually tackle the serious problems that are stopping the country from attracting the best student into science and engineering careers.
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Chief Scientific Officer Criticised by Committee

With Barak Obama championing the role of science in government in his inaugural speech, it is disappointing to see our very own Chief Scientific Advisor falling short of expectations.

Prof. John Beddington, has been criticised by the House of Commons Committee responsible for Science, the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee. As the government's most visible scientific expert, Beddington has a responsibility to champion science- and evidence-based decision making.

The committee, which oversees DIUS, found Beddington to be more equivocal than his predecessor, Prof. David King regarding the public funding of homeopathy, the reclassification of cannabis, and the role of evidence in government:

We are concerned that on homeopathy Professor Beddington did not take the opportunity to restate the importance of the scientific process and to state that what was important was the balance of scientific evidence, [and that he] has not chosen to challenge departments where no evidence was produced.
…
[he] is the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and we are surprised that rather than champion evidence-based science within government he appears to see his role as defending government policy or, in the case of homeopathy, explaining why there is no clear government policy.

King was known for dismissing silly ideas, so it is worrying that Beddington does not feel the need to put scientific truths ahead of political ones.
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Modular Physics Courses Harm Deep Learning

The change of A Level assessment from terminal exams to modules, examined every term or so, has increased exam success for students, but at the expense of a deep understanding of Physics.

The Curriculum 2000 program introduced Advanced Supplementary (AS) courses in the UK at teh beginning of the decade, to help give breadth to the A Level choices that students made at the end of compulsory schooling. Since they were only committing themselves to nine months, many people who had an interest in Physics, but were uncertain about its reputation for difficulty, felt they could take a chance. The effect on enrollment on to college Physics courses was immediate, with class sizes swelling considerably.

So why is it that Physics and Engineering degree courses have continued their decline in popularity?

Unintended Consequences

Class Size

Larger class sizes affect the time teachers can spend supporting individual students in the first year of the course, and the amount of preparation they can do, due to the increased quantity marking and reporting needed. Many students drop out after one year, but since large class sizes have become the norm, classes are cut to keep the student-staff ratio up. With the old two year courses, the classes shrank for the more challenging second year, allowing students to get one-to-one support more often and teachers to get a better understanding of each student's learning.

Dropping Courses

Weaker students, facing the prospect of failure after two years on a course, could find the motivation within themselves to work harder as the final exams drew nearer.

Being able to drop one of their three AS courses at the end of the first year encourages students to stick with the easiest courses in the attempt to maximise their haul of grades. This is no bad thing, and has contributed to the higher grades awarded in recent years, but there are serious side-effects.
For example, soon after their introduction I had a potential Oxbridge student, close to the end of the first year, excuse his recent lack of completed homework by saying he was thinking of dropping Physics (expecting grade A or B). Instead, he was considering continuing with Religious Studies (guaranteed, apparently, a grade A) as he wanted the status of a complete sweep of grade As, awarded to 26,000 students in 2008.

Schools are also tempted to encourage students to enroll onto easier subject, limiting science course uptake, but maximising the school's league table position.

Modules

The modular structure itself, though, is the biggest problem. Instead of a two year coherent course, designed to build concepts and skills progressively, students work towards six, largely independent, work units, called modules. Although the change was supposed to motivate students by keeping up the flow of high stakes examination, most of the effects have been negative and dangerous:

• Most importantly, modules, with their regular schedule of bite-sized exams, encourage cramming and surface learning from the students and teaching to the test by teachers.
  
• Mock exams, as a safe opportunity to test your progress, have lost their power to motivate.
  
• The module structure of the exams discourages exam boards from using broad synoptic style questions in the module exams, with deep questioning left until the last summer paper. But of course, the patterns of thought have been set by then, and students often fail to grasp the interconnectedness of the subject.

Drop the Modules

Modular courses act as a disincentive for students to thoroughly learn and understand their chosen subjects. The January exams, at least, should be abandoned by colleges, and the time gained put to goo use teaching the students to understand and love their subjects.
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No Leap Second for the UK

The Guardian, the Times, the Mail and all the others have got it wrong: when most of the world experiences a leap second on the stroke of the New Year, and all their clocks need adjusting, the UK's clocks can carry on regardless.

Zapperz over in the US at the Physics and Physicists blog has the same story.

A Leap Second At The End of 2008

Don't celebrate too soon for 2009. 2008 is going to be 1 second longer than you expected due to a leap second.

"On New Year’s Eve, the international authorities charged with keeping precise time will add a single second to our lives. It will be the 24th “leap second” since 1972, and the first since 2005." (NY Times)

Or you can kiss someone one second longer at midnight. :)

Zz.

To give Zapperz some dues, the USA bases its time standard on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), so our friends over the pond will benefit from the extra second.

Sadly, in the UK our kisses must be of the usual length. :(

The leap second applies to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, based on the atomic clock standard), and it is needed to bring UTC into line with Universal Time (specifically UT1), which is based on observed mean solar time at the Greenwich meridian (Greenwich Mean Time) and so the Earth's rotation.

Unfortunately, the UK's time standard is defined in law as GMT (a.k.a. UT1). Similarly, anyone else whose time standard is UT1, such as Ireland, Canada and Belgium - so no leap second for us.

However, even though GMT is the UKs legal time standard, the National Physical Laboratory has one of the world's most accurate clocks and contributes to the International Atomic Time standard. The long wave time signal, broadcast from Anthorn Radio Station in Cumbria, is a UTC signal, while the internet and GPS clocks all depend on the same atomic time standard.

GMT, then, (as an Earth based time) is not used in reality anymore, despite its official designation as the source of British time.

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Jim Knight wants more 'Flash and Bang'

The just released 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has seen England rise to fifth position after the four yearly study looked again at the quality of the science education of fourteen-year-olds around the world (BBC report: England's Pupils in Global Top 10).

English students are beaten only by those from Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, with all of Europe trailing in their wake. Jim Knight is clearly pleased at this validation of Labour policies on the world stage, but he can't bring himself to ease the political pressure off over-burdened schools, even if they have done all he asked of them.

Party Pooper

Knight has looked and looked, and he managed to find some bad news in the report. That's right — science teachers up and down the country can stop partying, under the impression that all was well in their subject and a pat on the back was due.

Children are enjoying science less than they used to! There has been a 21% drop in 'positive attitudes' reported by the pupils, and Jim is not happy.

Teachers, go and sit on the naughty step.

Must Do Better

Being the best in Europe and the industrialised West is not good enough if a few far-eastern nations with fantastically well drilled children are better.

Knight says in the press release:

This shows we are on the way to being world class but as we move towards this goal we need to make sure every child has fun in the classroom as well as achieving good results.
…
I am determined to make maths and science more exciting subjects to teach and learn, and I want every school to have access to the most innovative and effective teaching methods. I want more action in the classroom and more problem solving and ‘flash and bang’ to enthuse our pupils.

A new OFSTED target, perhaps? Inspectors could report:Your lesson on nuclear power was well taught and the children learned well, but there wasn't enough 'flash and bang' for the lesson to be rated any good.'

Squeezing the Pips

Other countries to suffer from reduced student positivity included Singapore and Hong Kong — both in the top ten alongside England. Jim Knight seems to think that league table rankings and pupil enjoyment are independent of each other, but teachers have complained for years about the curriculum and targets straitjacket that they have to operate in, and the effect on the enjoyment that classes are able to have.

The government has squeezed children hard so that they achieve their potential, but the pips are squeaking now. If he was serious about restoring awe and wonder to school science lessons, then Knight and Balls would be cutting the testing and accountability burden.

Freeing teachers to impart some of their love for their subjects, though, would risk a slip in the rankings. And that would never do, would it?
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Colleges Actively Diminish the Responsibility of Students

In their never-ending quest for OFSTED pacifing statistics, colleges and schools infantilise those who should be preparing to move into adulthood.

The independent and responsible students, that everyone in education claims to want to produce, are self-motivated, either by the learning they gain from hard work or by the promise of qualifications at the end of their courses. They have learnt from failures in the past that hard work pays off. But, with external examinations two or three times a year and the introduction of rewards, for meeting minimum standards instead of genuinely good acts, we make them more dependent on short term and external sources of motivation.

Declining Responsibility

OFSTED, the UK government watchdog for education, despairs that even the oldest students show little independence and responsibility for their learning, while at the same time congratulating schools on their rewards schemes and the efforts they make to stop disaffected students from failing despite themselves. Chocolates, certificates and extra trips are used in the attempt to buy responsible behaviour, in the mistaken attempt that unearned compliments are somehow a more clever way to manipulate children than the old fashioned idea of just deserts. But of course, withholding a promised reward is itself a punishment that worryingly displaces more desirable motivations.

The Withering of Internal Motivations

Even sixth formers seem to require external motivations to get up in the morning, now that reward systems are being extended to the over-sixteens. Is it really necessary to give certificates to everyone who is not misbehaving, just to try and encourage a few young people who would be better off out of education?

The governments now plans to force all under-eighteens to stay in education or formal training. This will, naturally, make things worse. Volunteers will value the education they get more than they would as conscripts, even if they would have volunteered anyway, nibbling away

At the moment, the once fearsome mock exams, used for decades to motivate students mid-course, are now a waste of time. More than ever, the refrain "is it important?" is heard, meaning "do these marks go towards my final grade?". The proliferation of externally set exams means that class tests are seen as unimportant even by bright students, so they lose their power to motivate. Low scores are seen as par for the course, since no preparation was done.

The Result

The govenrment's focus on reducing the embarrasingly large number of NEETs (youths not in employment, education or training) will work against the policy of producing ever more motivated and independent young people. The pressure on schools and colleges to stop teenagers from learning their own lessons from their choices and behaviour, since it risks the school's league table position, is counterproductive.

The best lessons will never come from a government initiative delivered in a classroom.
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Engineering Diplomas Only Partially Accepted by Universities

With both Oxford and Cambridge reporting that they will accept Advanced Engineering Diplomas for students entering their Engineering degree programmes, the top Russell Group Universities now have a unified response to the Government's flagship education policy. But it is not accepted without reservations, as

… it is essential that the diploma sufficiently equips candidates with the skills and knowledge they need to flourish on our courses and we want to be fully assured that they are sufficiently robust and challenging academically. Our member universities are in the process of assessing the academic rigour and general suitability of the diploma as a route to higher education.

In fact, although the Advanced Diploma will be considered worth three A Levels, anyone applying for Engineering degrees at a decent university will need to take A Levels alongside it.

Cambridge University says that "Students wishing to apply with this qualification must also have an A-level in physics", and Bristol University, for example, is equally blunt: while some Faculties will accept Diplomas as full qualification for entry, "Mechanical Engineering [will need an] Engineering Diploma grade A, plus A grades in A level Maths & Physics."

Ed Balls,the UK Schools Secretary, has said the the Diplomas will become "the qualification of choice", and Schools Minister Jim Knight believes that this

&hellip statement recognises that the diploma is a demanding qualification and that students who work hard and achieve highly in their diploma will be able to study at any university they choose.

I don't think A Level Physics will be replaced by the Diploma any time soon.
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'Coasting Schools' Attacked in the Latest Ministerial Balls-Up

The Government is tilting at windmills again with a ministerial attack on imagined weak schools. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, has decided it is time to tackle good schools for not being good enough. The press release says

Ministers are taking action after analysis shows that one in seven pupils do not progress a whole attainment level in English between the ages of 11 and 14. Until now ‘coasting’ schools have often missed out on focused attention and have been hard for parents to identify because of apparently satisfactory results.

This is appallingly wrong-headed for two reasons.

The Limits of Testing

First, it is in the nature of the tests that some pupils are awarded the wrong level. If everyone advanced by a whole level in their understanding, then the limited reliability of the tests would mean that a third will get the wrong level (or, about one in six would appear to have stood still for three years.)

A year ago The Primary Review, an independent two-year long enquiry into primary education in England, reported in its research survey Assessment Alternatives for Primary Education that

Regardless of the consistency of individual test items, the fact that a test has to be limited to a small sample of possible items means that the test as a whole is a rather poor measure for any individual pupil. This is because a different selection of items would produce a different result. Wiliam (2001) estimated the difference that this would make for the end of Key Stage tests in England. With a test of overall reliability of 0.80, this source of error would result in 32 per cent of pupils being given the wrong level.

This made a big splash at the time, for example here in the Guardian.

'Value Added' Scores

Second, the coasting schools will be identified if they meet any of a list of criteria given in the same press release, including if

• The school’s Contextual Value Added (CVA) score is significantly below average;
• There has been little or no improvement in the school’s progression rates over several years;

So a school that is consistently doing well needs a kicking if pass rates don't go up year on year, or if that school's particular challenges don't feature in the CVA ranking model. OFSTED, England's schools inspectorate, themselves say that categorising schools on the basis of CVA scores is "meaningless", as described by the BBC news item last August:

… in an example OFSTED gives it may appear that a school with a CVA of 1,009 is doing better than another with a CVA of 992.

"However, that would be incorrect," [OFSTED] says in new guidance to schools about the use of data. "In both cases, the range between the upper and lower confidence limits includes 1,000, so both schools are achieving average outcomes; their performance is about as expected."

The guidance adds: "No meaning can be attached to an absolute CVA value, and any ranking of schools by their CVA values is meaningless."

Homework for Ed Balls

Ed Balls needs to visit schools, not to "target" them (a rather aggressive term for what should be a supportive programme), but to study some maths. It is a shame that Mr Balls learned enough arithmetic at school to manipulate figures, but did not make a sufficient study of how to handle anything but the simplest data.
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How to Recruit a Physics Teacher

Plenty could be done to relieve the Physics teacher shortage, but no-one in power really wants to solve the problem.

The Problem

A recent open evening at my college produced plenty of potential students to start Physics A Level next year, but there was a distinctive pattern in their origin: very many of them were currently at two schools on the other side of town and these talked enthusiastically about their current Physics teacher. However, there were hardly any from the very large comprehensive just a few hundred metres up the road (or indeed from several other close schools.)

Without being able to talk to those non-attenders, I cannot be sure, but one likely reason stands out. There is no Physics teacher at the school, and there hasn't been one for years.

Now, this is by no means uncommon. A major report on the supply and retention of Physics teachers published in the summer by The Centre for Education and Employment Research said

it was possible to predict with 84% accuracy whether a school would have any physics specialists, essentially from whether it had a sixth form, its region, whether it had specialist status in science, engineering or technology, and the ability of its pupils as indicated by GCSE results.
…
Few schools with high ability children, low eligibility for free school meals and low special needs were without a physics specialist, but this was true of over half those with poor GCSE results and a high intake with special needs. Of the school types, grammars, voluntary controlled and faith schools tended to come off best, and small schools worst.

My area has secondary schools up to age 16, with a sixth form college for the 16-18 age group. One school with a sixth form in a town close by has a full complement of Physics teachers, as does my sixth form college, though I think that each of the local 11-16 schools has few or none. I say 'I think', because it is difficult to find out without contacts in the schools: they don't exactly advertise the fact on their websites, especially now most of them offer 'separate sciences', including GCSE Physics. It would be embarrassing. What they do claim, however, is that they have no science teacher vacancies. I am suspicious of this practice, though, since the secondaries with sixth forms elsewhere in the county are content to publish a staff list complete with their specialisms (Biology, Chemistry or Physics) instead of the generic Science Teacher label. See my previous post on this problem: Biologists Shouldn't Teach Physics.

Complications

Physics teachers, naturally, can make good use or their rarity. As most schools in the country are in want of a Physics teacher, they can pick and choose their school. A large proportion of Physics teachers want the intellectual stimulus of some A Level teaching and a good working environment, leaving 11-16 schools, especially in large urban areas where behaviour can be a problem, in a difficult position. The same report adds that

…turnover and moves to other schools were somewhat higher for physics specialists than for teachers in the other core subjects. The main driver of wastage in physics is retirement, which contributes a quarter of the total turnover and half the wastage. Nearly three times as many physics leavers as biology leavers were aged over 50. Some of the retirements were normal age, but most were premature, often stemming from a sense of dissatisfaction. About half the physics teachers were resigning to go to other state schools. The main reasons were promotion, re-location and wanting to get away from their present school.

This picking and choosing means that school are in a stiff competition for these people. But they often do not compete, so their pupils lose out.

Solutions

In many other industries the shortage would be eased but matching the rewards to the importance and difficulty of recruitment, but as national pay bargaining with the unions rules out differential pay, schools must be imaginative:

• Create 'Physics and Maths' posts and the associated training courses, to allow teachers to avoid having to teach the other sciences. Biology teaching is not very popular with Physics graduates - a quarter of Physics qualified trainees abandon physics to teach Maths.


• Offer posts with responsibility. These come with extra money, and can be tailored to keep the burden low.


• Make more use of the discretionary payments that are already allowed for recruitment and retention purposes, but which are rarely used.


• Bite the bullet, and advertise higher salaries for Physics teachers willing to teach in schools that cannot otherwise attract applicants. This should encourage the small number of teachers spread out more evenly and according to demand.
  


• Lastly, encourage more Physics graduates into teaching by moving to a fully differential pay structure.

Why are the first three points not used more often to ease shortages?

I suspect head teachers are keen to believe that all science teachers should be able to teach all the sciences. This is obviously untrue, but is a popular conceit (I have only come across one non-Physics colleague who could understand Newton's First Law of Motion, for example, despite that topic being an integral part of the balanced science curriculum taught by non-specialists to all 11-year-olds).

The final two points provide the only reliable medium to long term solution for the the crisis. However, the educational establishment, such as it is, has followed the tradition of being politically rather left of centre, and there is a strong feeling that all teachers should be treated equally. The leftist teaching unions, which have a strong interest in solving the problem of chronic specialist teacher shortages, reject the dilution of their power in national pay bargaining negotiations, are the main stumbling block on the way to ending the crisis in state schools, even the new City Academies which have flexibility in their pay awards.

Independent schools can already compete financially for teachers - how many of these schools are short of a Physics master - so extending the market in teachers to state comprehensive could reverse the long decline in specialist Physics teacher recruitment.
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Metric Tomatoes, Luddites and Lord Kelvin.

Modern students, even those who have chosen to study advanced physics, cannot understand the full imperial system, and certainly are not able to calculate using them. This is occasionally demonstrated in class when a student complains that they can't relate to the metric SI units, and goes on to immediately demonstrate that they have no idea of how many ounces there are to the pound, or stones to the ton, or inches to the yard, or yards to the mile. They are certainly unaware of the coherent imperial unit of mass, the slug or the meaning of the fathom, acre or gallon, the chain, troy-ounce or nautical mile.

I strongly suspect that this is also the case with metric martyr Janet Devers, in the papers again for heroicly refusing to display metric units alongside the imperial ones, and bravely weighing out vegetables with pound only scales. Janet is launching an appeal against her conviction, which resulted in a £5000 fine and a conditional discharge. The Magistrate said

"We note that you said you were doing this in the interests of your customers, although you ought to have known you were breaking the law in doing so."

Indeed. Janet complained that a criminal record meant she would not be able to travel to the United States to see family. Poor thing.

Everyone under the age of 45 years has studied metric units exclusively in school, since the UK went metric in 1972, sixty-eight years after Lord Kelvin collected eight million signatures calling for the adoption of metric measures. That was a fifth of the population at that time.

Hansard records Lord Belhaven and Stenton, moving the second reading of the Weights and Measures (Metric System) Bill in 1904 as saying:

The metric system has been taught in the elementary schools under the Educational Code of 1900, but it is to be regretted that though the teachers give much time and trouble to teaching this new subject, in many cases the examiners have not asked any questions in that section of arithmetic. Therefore school teachers are very much disheartened when they find that inspectors seem to look upon it in a half-hearted way and they get no credit for the time they devote to the teaching of it. If this Bill passes it will be the means of infusing a great deal more energy into this particular subject.

and continues with

The second objection to our present system is the waste of time in teaching it to children. It is not alone the teaching of the tables which I have just referred to—it is the whole system of compound addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and the system of computation called "Practice."

It is estimated, on high educational authority, that every child wastes one year of its arithmetical school time in learning these subjects and that in many cases the time lost is much greater. Last year inquiries were made of headmasters of schools on this subject, and 197 sent replies, of which 161 said that saving of time in teaching the metric system would be one year, thirty said it would be two years, and six that it would be three years. This gives a French or German child a great advantage over an English child, as the time saved can be applied to some more useful subject.

I should like to quote from one of the many letters received. The senior mathematical master of Edinburgh High School wrote— An average scholar would save at least a year and a half, probably two. This saving is great in itself, but if it be considered how much he saves by not being subjected to a wearisome process of acquiring the knowledge, say, to convert ordinary yards to poles and vice versâ, or square yards to perches and give a rational remainder, and the wearing out of his nervous system—not to speak of the teachers'—I conceive it to be not only a saving of time but an economy of mental effort which is incalculable. The objection does not lie only in the time which is wasted. The child is wearied and disheartened by the difficulties of the subject; and, in the case of boys at our public schools, many get such a distaste for arithmetic that they lose all desire to study mathematics afterwards, and I think this has much to do with the low standard of mathematical knowledge in this country.

Modern students, even those who have chosen to study advanced physics, cannot understand the full imperial system, and certainly are not able to calculate using them.

The Physicist, Mathematician and Engineer Lord Kelvin supported the Bill in 1904, noting in passing that the Metric system was a English invention:

While we are grateful to France for having given us the metric system, while we see France, Germany, Italy, and Austria rejoicing in the use of it, and benefiting every day by the use of it, it is somewhat interesting to know that, after all, the decimal system, worked out by the French philosophers, originated in England In a letter dated 14th November, 1783, James Watt laid down a plan which was in all respects the system adopted by the French philosophers seven years later, which the French Government suggested to the King of England as a system that might be adopted by international agreement. James Watt's objects were to secure uniformity and to establish a mode of division which should be convenient as long as decimal arithmetic lasted.

A hundred years ago, elementary schools in England started to teach metric units, while the Germans changed over completely in two weeks without obvious difficulty.

A century later, the Luddites seem to be winning.
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SATs for 14-Year-Olds Scrapped

Ed Balls has finally bowed to the inevitable, accepting that the English examination system is far too bloated and there are not enough markers to process national exams for all 7, 11, 14, 15, 16-year-olds in the country. The disastrous management of last year's Key Stage 3 National Curriculum Tests (the age 14 SATs) has forced Balls to cancel them permanently. It is a shame that he did not do this for educational reasons (for example, see this previous post), but the move will still be welcomed by parents and teachers.

The main problem, though, of these national tests has always been their narrowness. They only test a predictable subset of the National Curriculum, with a question style that does not vary, making them susceptible to coaching, or teaching to the test.

However, the huge pressure on teachers to teach to the test, bleated about routinely by the unions and criticised in report after report, could be eased by two simple measures:

• First, the General Teaching Councils could declare that teaching to the test was unprofessional. Teachers will then be free to do the right thing and stop pressurising the pupils.
  
  
• Secondly, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority should both take control of the copyright of the past test questions, banning their unauthorised reproduction and use in classrooms, and change the style of questions each year.
  

Without an obvious test to teach to, and no reliable past questions, the pressure will be on to teach the whole curriculum - exactly what was originally intended when the National Curriculum was introduced.
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Biologists Shouldn't Teach Physics

Essential, foundational ideas of physics are being presented to children by teachers who know nothing about them themselves. Able children are being undermined by the belief that there is nothing in the compulsory science curriculum that cannot be taught by any science teacher and that physics teachers, bringing only enthusiasm to an inherently dull subject, are therefore not required for physics lessons.

Having just finished a unit on forces and motion with 16- and 17-year-olds, we started on work and energy. After some introductory discussions and activities, the students were given a task to research and describe how wind turbines worked, in preparation for a study of the work done by the wind. Prompted to describe how the wind makes the generator turn, each student wrote that the wind's energy did it. When pressed, one offered that the wind's kinetic energy spun the blades and the blades' kinetic energy was turned into electricity. How does kinetic energy do that then? Well, the generator turns kinetic into electricity, they said, something to do with magnets.

Well, that's just dandy, as it is really no more than a plausible sounding 'just so' story. Without the technical terms the explanation is empty. "The wind turbine has something about it that makes electricity from wind" has nothing of substance and only a patina of education. The answers are routinely consistent with the idea that energy is a sort of fluid with some physical reality, akin to the caloric whose existence was disproved when Joule showed that heat was a method of energy transfer.

So how do bright pupils routinely get through secondary school physics lessons without a working understanding of the relationship between work and energy?

The short answer is: biology teachers.

Well, not their existence per se, but their willingness to teach physics topics about which they know nothing. That, and the connivance of school managers and government ministers who pretend that every biologist, chemist, environmental scientist, biochemist, physicist, engineer, geologist, metallurgist and zoologist can be treated as a generic science teacher, and should be able to teach any science specialism to any class up to age sixteen.

Of course, that is a self-serving cynical delusion. Cynical, because having that belief allows a head teacher to claim that their school has no vacancies, even when, as is the case with at least one school that feeds to my sixth form, they have had no physics teacher for several years. That school even takes the brightest pupils and teaches them more than the minimalist physics in the 'double science' GCSE, dragging them through separate biology, chemistry and physics courses without even bothering to employ a specialist physics teacher.

But does it matter? Can't a graduate scientist teach any of the simple topics that appear in the secondary curriculum, as long as they refrain from teaching A levels?

The response must be a clear 'no'. It should be shouted from the rooftops and at all education ministers, head teachers and science department heads. Specialist science teachers are not interchangeable. Biologists, especially, do not understand physics. They are often required to teach Newton’s Laws of Motion and Energy to the younger secondary pupils, but I have yet to meet a biology teacher who understands them even in the shallowest terms.

Asked about his willingness to teach from a position of ignorance, a biologist Head of Science shrugged it off with a “Well, that’s physics”, while more recently qualified teachers say they think that they teach physics better than the specialists as their difficulties with it themselves puts them closer to the children’s’ experiences. Honestly! I have heard both comments several times.

Secondary schools in inner-city areas, schools without sixth-forms and those whose managers insist on making physics teachers teach biology and the biology teachers physics, will continue to lose physics teachers, and pupils will fail to see the wonder and coherence of physics.
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Patten versus Denham

Universities Minister John Denham has heaped criticism on Chris Patten after his speech at the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference last week, for suggesting that universities could not “make up for the deficiencies of secondary education”:

It is my belief that there is now widespread acceptance across our universities that the current system does not yet capture all the talent that exists in young people across the country, which is why it is all the more disappointing to hear the comments of critics like Chris Patten who have an outmoded view of the central issues in widening participation.

For Denham, "widening participation" seems to be the sole function of elite institutions. He cannot, being a good Marxist, bear the idea that Oxford will not admit the badly educated. Chris Patten, one-time Education Minister and current Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle Universities, had complained that:

However hard we try to widen participation at Oxbridge, and I am sure you could say the same at many other universities, there is no chance whatsoever of meeting the socio-economic targets set by agents of government so long as the proportion of students getting A grades in traditional academic A-level subjects at private and maintained schools stays the same. It is as simple as that.

It is as simple as that.

As I wrote in a previous post, poorly qualified students do not do well at university. Trying to identify some degree of intrinsic worth or talent in a student at school and then transplanting them to a Russel Group university will not work: an undeveloped talent is not a sufficient preparation for advanced study. A clutch of grade As at A level is not a guarantee either, but like it or not, if a student cannot get high grades at school, for whatever reason, they will start university a long way behind their classmates.

Can universities be expected to make up in three or four years the educational scars left by thirteen years in an inner-city sink school? Denham thinks so, saying that "Education is the most powerful tool we have in achieving social justice." If he means that accepting weak candidates onto challenging courses is an indicator that social justice has been achieved, then he is seriously deluded. It is not just to set up these poor people for such a fall, as fall they will.

Social justice should not be treated as simply another high-stakes key target that can be improved by crudely manipulating the indicator variable (percentage of sink estate kids at Oxford) directly by coercing universities. The indicator is only useful if it improves indirectly, as a result of better schooling, and that will need a whole slew of 'indicators' to be manipulated: financial poverty of families; poverty of ambition in much of the working-class culture; the flight of good teachers to 'good' schools; the lack of specialist teachers; and many others.

Of course, this is a difficult task. So difficult that no country has ever solved the problem. Bashing 'posh' universities in the press is much easier.

To give the government some credit, though, Denham was making his comments about Lord Patten at a conference for the AimHigher project, which is a major scheme to tackle poverty of ambition by supporting and encouraging children who come from families with no history of Higher Education to consider university and professional careers. My own college has received money to pay for such a scheme from this project and is currently identifying and briefing suitable students and their parents.

I know this, not because of the high quality of internal staff communication, but because several students disappeared from my classroom suddenly, missing two hours of their physics lesson. Apparently, they had been instructed to skip their lessons to attend the compulsory AimHigher meeting.

Hasn't anyone learned?
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