Teachers are getting ready, reports Dominique Driver

For many science teachers this year will prove particularly demanding, as they get ready to teach the new GCSE science courses for the first time.

All schools will have to adopt a new GCSE science curriculum, although they will have the choice between a number of programmes on offer. Each exam board has created a suite of new GCSEs, in line with revised criteria from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. The courses offer a more contemporary approach to science teaching with greater flexibility and choice for students, in recognition of the fact that only a minority go on to study science at a higher level.

The most widely known, and perhaps diverse of these new programmes is Oxford Cambridge and RSA (OCR) Examinations Board’s Twenty First Century Science, developed in collaboration with the University of York and Nuffield Curriculum Centre, with funding from the Salters’ Institute, Nuffield Foundation, and Wellcome Trust.

Controversial course

The move has been criticised by many Independent Schools, who believe that it is ‘dumbing down’ classroom science. Janet Pickering, Headmistress of Withington Girls School in Manchester explains: ‘Everyone was very concerned that it was all very touchy-feely, let’s appeal to very low ability students and we were thinking, well how’s that going to work for us?’ Talking to the Independent, Dr Martin Stephen, High Master of St Paul's School for boys in London, said the GCSE had ‘a terrifying absence of proper science…it is no preparation for A-level.’

A firm supporter of the new course, Jonathan Gray, Head of Physics at Gosford Hill School in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, believes that such criticisms are unfounded. ‘I think if you know how to learn something you can learn it and that’s always got to be addressed first. If we can equip them with the skills to be able to learn things when they leave school then that’s great.’ He is heading the changeover to Twenty First Century Science in his school, describing it as ‘much less content driven and more about how science works.’

Pilot experience

Meanwhile, in a different part of Oxfordshire, the new scheme is already in full swing. Wheatley Park School in Holton is one of 80 schools that has been piloting Twenty First Century Science over the last three years, with OCR being the only examining body to have run a pilot scheme.

Ben Green, Head of Science at Wheatley Park, says that students have generally received the new programme positively, whilst the teachers have actively noticed a difference in their attitudes towards science. He describes a perfect example of this. ‘A few years ago I was teaching a class in year 11 and we were doing plant hormones and it was about March time, just before their exams. They were sitting there going ‘oh what’s the point of all this’ and actually I had to agree with them, the point was pretty unrelated to what they were going to experience.’

And now? ‘With the equivalent group in the current year 11 it was nothing like that at all – they were still engaged and interested. I think that any course that does that has got to be good news.’

Ethics

However there are some areas where he feels the new course may be trying too hard to please.

‘It deals with some quite difficult ideas, like ethics, and we were wondering whether this is actually a useful thing for them to know about. The MMR vaccine for example, most people when they become citizens want to know whether to have the vaccine for their child or not. They don’t want to be weighing up the evidence for and against, necessarily. We were wondering whether it overplays the ethical questions.’

But Jonathan Gray disagrees. ‘There are going to be results that contradict each other – the government says that your child should have the MMR vaccine but then people hear on the news the next day a trial’s been done and there could be a problem with it. If you don’t understand the ethical perspective and you don’t understand how scientists have got their results, then who do you believe? Part of what we’re hoping to teach is that science is often not a case of black and white.’

In general though, Ben Green describes the switchover as ‘most definitely’ a positive one: ‘We do a lot more discussion and group work, getting kids to express their own opinions a lot more.’

For science teachers one message is clear: some major changes and challenges are on the horizon.

Dominique Driver is currently completing an MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London