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Science Teaching

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Broers, both on an excellent and timely report and on bringing forward the debate. There are four points on which I want to comment. The first relates to student choices. To accommodate the challenges of the 21st century advances, we might even look beyond the baccalaureate-style teaching syllabus commended in the report to applying the traditional sciences tothe new technologies. For example, information technology could be taught as an extension of physics; biotechnology as an extension of biology; and nanotechnology as an extension of chemistry. A combined university course covering in equal measure all three technologies would have several advantages. It would cater for the new demand for convergent science mandated by the advances,for example, of biomedical applications and nanotechnology, in interfacing brain and body with the external world. Furthermore, a multidisciplinary degree could well inspire novel ideas and concepts, normally precluded by the inherited dogma of single disciplines. Then again, such a topical and varied course might prove appealing to a generation of school-leavers not normally attracted to highly specialised science. My second point concerns the outreach activities by universities to science teaching in schools. The new beacons for public engagement are to be encouraged. But in many university departments, activities outside the normal teaching and research purlieu of the university are sometimes actively discouraged or, in any event, regarded as lower status compared with the white heat of research. However, such interaction between school and university science is vital: it excites and encourages the next generation of potential scientists. It enables the university scientists to see the wood for the trees, as they share their passion with a more general audience, which in turn helps them with their research and enables them to question the basic assumptions that perhaps have constrained the novelty of their own projects. Thirdly, and most importantly, it increases the school activity with re-enfranchising the science school teacher to be part of the scientific community. There are already some excellent outreach schemes. For example, we have already heard of the science ambassador scheme, which aims for working scientists to visit schools, and another, which arose when I was a thinker in residence in South Australia. We pioneered a twinning scheme, whereby scientists had a one-on-one pairing with science school teachers. While being fiscally relatively modest to set up, the impact has proved wide ranging. Already working wonderfully is the exemplar Step-Up project funded by the Northern Ireland Higher Education Council. Step-Up is a unique and innovative interventionist programme, which provides new learning opportunities in science for talented young people who live in areas of social and economic disadvantage. It involves an intense two-year programme of work, and has been operating successfully in Northern Ireland for about seven years. It actively involves the university, schools, local industry, local hospitals and government agencies. To date almost 500 students have participated in the programme. Universities UK has described Step-Up as follows: "““An outstanding example of best practice in the provision of educational opportunities for students from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds””." Surely such a scheme could and should be implemented throughout the UK. In any event, it would surely be to everyone’s benefit and much more effective if all these diverse schemes could be co-ordinated. The third area of the report on which I want to comment is the demise of the practical aspect of teaching science. The most basic aspect of science is the excitement of discovering something for yourself by experiment. Yet this is often neglected in the panic to meet imposed targets. Related here is the subject matter itself. I was deterred from science as a schoolgirl because no one told me what distilled water was or why its production was relevant or interesting. Compared with history or literature, it seemed an extraordinarily dull activity with little opportunity for initiative, creativity or my own ideas. The difficulty with many subjects in the science curriculum is that they exceed the time and space scale relating to our normal lives. Things happen either very quicklyor very slowly, over galaxies or at microscopic resolutions not seen with the naked eye. The challenge when teaching is therefore to bring home the impact of such events and relate them to everyday life. Then there is the problem of resources and time. Making mistakes takes time. Going down intellectual cul-de-sacs takes time. Laying on state-of-the-art experiments with back-up technical expertise takes time. Being mindful of the health and safety implications and having appropriate rather than knee-jerk and panicky risk assessment takes time and specialist knowledge. I welcome the introduction of the science centres mentioned in the report but would also like to flag that we at the Royal Institution—where I have the honour to be director—are hoping to pioneer a young scientists’ centre, where under-privileged schools especially will be able to enjoy state-of-the-art lab resources free of charge, and our staff can develop exciting and interesting questions in collaboration with teachers that may well be outside of, and complementary to, the syllabus. They will none the less excite the child to ask questions and, above all, perform their own experiments. Even one day can change your life and set in train an excitement that motivates you to stick with the most detailed of box-ticking courses. Fourthly, on teacher training and retention, we now hear much of personalised training, meta-cognition and brain-based research. Essentially, the idea is that if we are to keep pace with current technologies, we must educate people to learn rather than just to acquire a set number of facts which they then sell back to society for the next 40 years. Knowledge of the latest advances in neuroscience is therefore invaluable. Again in Australia, I was delighted that we were able to pioneer a course forall teachers—primary and secondary, arts and sciences—to keep abreast of the latest developments in the pedagogic applications of neuroscience, and to start using them in experimental projects in the classroom. To this end, we have started the All-Party Group on Scientific Research in Learning and Education—the next meeting is on 15 May. Our remit is to explore how teachers, scientists, government and other relevant organisations can collectively ensure that classroom practice is informed by the best evidence from the brain sciences. In conclusion, I support this timely report. There is no simple quick-fix solution to the diverse issues of science teaching. It is a multi-dimensional problem, and a multi-layered issue for a society growing up in the 21st century, but one that is among the most critical to shaping that society.