A leading education union boss says headteachers will be unable to fulfil the government’s latest plan to teach the sciences separately at GCSE because of an overwhelming lack of specialist teachers.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is set to announce that all children should be taught Biology, Physics and Chemistry and be examined on them separately again in a major shake-up of science teaching to boost social mobility.
But General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) Pepe Di’Iasio said there would be significant ‘challenges to actually deliver’ teaching three sciences.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I think when Headteachers hear and read about this this weekend they will be thinking ‘so where am I going to find these specialist science teachers to do this – particularly physics teachers?’ There’s a challenge there to actually deliver this.’
His caution comes against a backdrop of such a sustained dip in available specialist science teachers that the Institute of Physics in September warned there was ‘a critical shortage’ of Physics teachers, meaning an estimated 700,000 pupils in UK schools were being deprived of a subject specialist.
Meanwhile Ms Phillipson’s year-long Curriculum and Assessment Review, led by Dame Becky Francis, is due to report its detailed findings imminently.
It will say that children in the most deprived areas are the most likely to be held back by not having studied three sciences while children from more affluent areas who take separate sciences experience a positive knock-on effect in their future careers, according to The Times.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is set to announce that all children should be taught Biology, Physics and Chemistry and be examined on them separately again in a major shake-up of science teaching to boost social mobility
But General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) Pepe Di’Iasio said there would be significant ‘challenges to actually deliver’ teaching three sciences (stock image)
Currently, most pupils in the UK sit for a double science GCSE equivalent to two GCSEs, which combines physics, biology and chemistry.
The double science award was first offered as part of the National Curriculum reforms in the early 1990s to give students a broader base of scientific knowledge and was later seen as a key part of the 2010 EBacc – English Baccalaureate performance measure – but it has led to accusations that science has been dumbed down for some.
And Mr D’Iasio said that while ASCL welcomed the ‘opportunity and entitlement for every child to study separate sciences as all the evidence suggests it can lead to benefits at A level, benefits in the Labour market and students going on to get potential increased earnings and job progressions’, he said it should not be compulsory.
‘Our welcome comes with a warning that we also need to understand that it shouldn’t be mandated as it is not necessarily for everyone but it is something that children should be able to access and gain an opportunity to do.
‘It needs to come as part of a package that means recruitment is there and the support of those new staff is there too and also that there is a balance against a loss and detriment to the arts and humanities subjects.’
Nationwide, fewer than a quarter of pupils now sit separate GCSE science exams with around one in ten schools not even offering them as subjects. Independent schools and grammar schools are more likely to offer the sciences separately.
Ms Phillipson is understood to want to boost opportunities for pupils from more modest backgrounds to go on to become science graduates by insisting on uptake of all three sciences.
