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A series of government leaks and statements over the past three weeks
has signalled that the Prime Minister, John Major, intends a radical shake-up
in the one area of education untouched by his predecessor – post-16 education.
The changes will have a profound impact on the teaching of science, which
has already been used as the proving ground for many of the ideas being
considered.

In a speech last week, Tim Eggar, minister of state at the Department
of Education and Science (DES), said that wheels were in motion to ‘clarify
the route through vocational qualifications, and provide young people with
an attractive alternative to A levels.’ And press reports say government
is to introduce a new tier of vocational qualifications which students will
sit for at the same time as for A levels.

Before resigning, Margaret Thatcher presided over sweeping changes to
degree-level education and schooling up to 16, but she left alone the ‘gold
standard’ of specialised, exam-based A levels. Major, who needs to back
up his early promise to make education a priority, is encouraging ministers
at the DES to give substance to their rhetoric which advocated ‘parity of
esteem’ between academic A levels and work-related vocational courses for
16 to 19-year-olds.

The drive behind both earlier changes and more recent plans has been
the need to create a technologically skilled workforce to keep Britain economically
competitive in the 21st century. This has put science at the centre of the
changes and as a result science in schools is booming.

For the first time, science in primary schools has gone beyond nature
study. For example, seven-year-olds equipped with corks, nails and a bowl
of water are being asked to observe flotation; to hypothesise and test (see
box).

In secondary schools science has moved to centre stage, thanks to its
inclusion in the core of the recently adopted national curriculum. Nearly
all pupils under 16 will now study maths and a double helping of science
to GCSE standard (equivalent in total to three of the old-style O levels).
They will also do some technology.

From 5 to 16 most pupils will study science as a unified subject, though
some schools (mostly independents outside the state system) will offer an
option of physics, biology and chemistry.

Now post-16 education, which extends beyond GCSEs up to the start of
degree courses, is to be given similar treatment. Into this category, along
with A levels, fall a host of vocational qualifications such as the BTECs,
which the government is currently revising to make their value simpler to
understand.

BTECs, organised by the Business and Technician Education Council, start
with post-GCSE ‘Firsts’ and go up to pre-degree ‘National Diplomas’. In
A levels, every student’s knowledge in an exam is judged against every other’s.
In BTECs, as in a driving test, if students can show they have acquired
the skill, they pass.

The shake-up has been a long-term aim of employers and the education
establishment because they believe Britain’s system of post-16 education
is antiquated and fails to provide future workers with the skills they will
need. Another complaint has been that vocational qualifications have little
value in the jobs marketplace and are not accepted by universities as a
proper grounding for degree courses.

‘The changing nature of work, the pace of technological advance and
the pressure on companies to innovate means employers are looking for a
radically different contribution from their employees,’ says Margaret Murray,
director of education at the Confederation of British Industry. ‘The challenge
is to upgrade the level of skills’.

Sigbert Prais, a researcher at the National Institute for Economic and
Social Research, has examined how education and training affect industrial
productivity in Britain and Europe. His recent research makes disturbing
reading.

Britain produces roughly the same proportion of graduates as the Netherlands
and what was formerly West Germany – 17 per cent of the workforce. But 63
per cent of Britain’s workforce has no vocational qualification at all against
38 per cent in the Netherlands and 26 per cent in Germany.

The effect of this skills gap is to lower quality and productivity in
Britain. ‘There is a 40 per cent advantage per worker-hour in Germany,’
says Prais. The reason, he says, is that workers on the shop floor in Germany
have skills held only by specialists in Britain, allowing them, for example,
to spot faults earlier and keep machinery running.

In the end, low productivity leads to commercial failure. ‘The reason
we have no machine tool industry is that the technical quality is not up
to scratch,’ says Prais.

Creating a skilled workforce of the type Prais and the CBI are looking
for will require a sharp rise in the numbers staying on in education or
training. In Britain, 52 per cent of 17-year-olds remain in education against
82 per cent in Germany and 79 per cent in the Netherlands. The gap is still
evident at the age of 21, when 5 per cent of Britons are in education or
training against 23 per cent in Germany and 25 per cent in the Netherlands.

Though Major has let it be known that he is concerned by these statistics,
Thatcher remained unmoved by them. Last summer, the then education minister,
John MacGregor, floated the idea of radically reforming A levels, but was
blocked by Thatcher and the Headmasters’ Conference, which represents some
of Britain’s most prestigious independent schools.

Tim Eggar then began to promote vocational courses strongly. Ministers
encouraged schools to offer BTEC Firsts in sixth forms for the first time.
Major’s arrival has freed the DES to go further.

The present education minister, Kenneth Clarke, started by saying the
places where most 16 to 19-year-olds study – further education colleges
and sixth form colleges – are to be wrested from local control and put directly
under the department’s rule. In May, Clarke will publish a White Paper detailing
his plans to raise the image of vocational courses to that of A levels.
As well as a vocational equivalent to A levels, press reports say Clarke
may go so far as proposing a unified diploma for both routes of education.

Although the details of Clarke’s reported diploma have yet to be announced,
they would appear to follow similar lines to proposals put together by the
Royal Society. The Society’s plans, shortly to be formally announced, will
recommend a diploma assessed partly by exams on knowledge of the subject
and partly on course work. Students would study more subjects than under
A levels, and core skills such as the ability to research and write a report
would be included in every course. Credit would be awarded for individual
modules, so students who failed one module could do it again without having
to retake all their successful modules. There would also be work experience
for all students.

Changes in post-16 education will not be confined to science. But science
is already being used to test bridges across the academic-vocational divide.
One example is the Wessex A levels. Currently being tested in the West Country.

Wessex A levels started in the sciences and are expanding into other
subjects. They are modular, include core skills and – most disturbing to
advocates of traditional A levels – are 40 per cent assessed by course work.
The DES has up till now limited the project to 300 pupils per subject. Nevertheless,
the Wessex courses suggest a shape that Clarke’s reforms might take.

In a pilot project started last September at Gloscat further education
college in Gloucester, Wessex A levels are putting first-year A-level science
students on a common course with students on their first year of a BTEC
National Diploma in science. Pupils will choose the course they prefer at
the end of the year.

The courses have been specially designed so that students who transfer
get credit for the work they have done and can slip easily into the alternative
course. BTEC’s practical requirements are covered in Wessex modules, the
marks for which count towards both qualifications.

The Gloscat students’ motivations are down to earth. ‘I went back to
my old sixth form, hated it and came here,’ says 17-year-old chemistry and
biology student, Carolyn Street. ‘I find it a hell of a lot easier.’ She
is keen on the credit she gets for work on practical modules such as a chemical
assay of aspirin.

Eighteen-year-old Richard Berry is taking Wessex chemistry. He has dropped
‘boring’ non-Wessex physics, even though he wants to work as a research
chemist. Again, the modules are an attraction. ‘The module explains how
the course relates to life in general,’ he says.

Both students have their eyes fixed firmly on A levels; neither intends
to take the BTEC option. But if, like a large proportion of A-level students
they drop out or fail, they may think again.

Bob Mudd, the pupils’ chemistry teacher at Gloscat, is enthusiastic.
‘The benefits are immense,’ he says. ‘The way BTEC helps to profile a pupil’s
progress and the industrial application of material is a model for A levels’.

Nationally, a broad curriculum in the Wessex vein would mean that while
more students would come out of school knowing some science, those who go
on to science degrees might know less about their specialism. But far from
provoking cries of anguish from academics, the approach is being welcomed
by the Royal Society.

Dick West, professor of science education at the Open University and
one of the authors of the Royal Society report, welcomes the signs of change
from the government. ‘There is a lot going on all of a sudden,’ he says.
‘The departure of Thatcher has meant greater freedom for ministers to think
constructively. Suddenly from nowhere we are getting messages that there
is going to be a totally new structure.’

* * *

It is winter. Outside the classroom there is wind, rain, even snow.
So this term Denise Homer’s class of 10 and 11-year-olds at Thornhill primary
school in north London is investigating the weather.

Homer’s description of her lessons sounds like science in miniature.
‘I try to get them to understand the concept of a fair test, to report what
they do and find out,’ she says. ‘I try to get them to draw conclusions,
which is the thing they find hardest to do.’

For pupils Anoushka Punic and Daisy Neville it is their second year
of science. In a class on a Wednesday morning they try to build a wind gauge
from card and balsawood. Their work card has a picture of five different
weights of wood hanging from a frame and the idea is that heavier tabs of
wood are moved by stronger winds. Because there are 12 strengths of wind
force in the Beaufort scale Anoushka and Daisy have decided to build a frame
with 12 tabs.

‘Tonight I’m going to get a heavy metal tab cut for force 12,’ says
Daisy. She and Anoushka are testing different materials by hanging them
up and blowing on them. Two questions bring the pair to the edge of understanding.

What is the gauge for? ‘You need to say ‘force 5′ over the telephone.
It would be much quicker than explaining.’ How will the person at the other
end know that their force 5 is the same as yours? ‘I’m not sure.’ Later
in the class Daisy thought of an answer. ‘If the people on the telephone
had met before they could test them (the gauges) together.’

Over the past few weeks other children have been making rainfall measurements
twice daily and recording them on a chart along with other meterological
readings. Homer says she would like to have hooked up thermometers and other
sensors to the class computer for the children to get experience of data
analysis on a computer. Unfortunately, Thornhill cannot afford the equipment.
Lack of funds has been a common cry from schools across the country.

Science is no longer just a trip to a pond to search for wildlife. It
is highly organised and its scope is broad, ranging from studies in geology
to astronomy.

Homer feels that the increase in science in her classroom is the biggest
of the changes wrought by the national curriculum. ‘We did very little science
really when I started,’ she says. She has O levels in physics, chemistry
and biology and does not have special problems with teaching science. But
many of her colleagues do.

Jane Savage, lecturer in primary education at the Institute of Education
in London, agrees. ‘Science under the national curriculum is an enormous
change. We are training teachers who have very little expertise themselves
to do it.’ She points out that primary teachers are mostly women and, on
average, women study science to a lower level than men. The DES has set
up a massive in-service training effort to bring teachers up to scratch
in science.

Homer says the children enjoy science. But do they want to be scientists
when they grow up? Amah Rose, one of the pupils collecting rainwater has
made up her mind. ‘Science is fun but I wouldn’t like to take it up as a
job. I wouldn’t want to spend all my life in a lab.’