Interesting discussion on BBC R4 Today programme between Richard Pike of the Royal Society of Chemistry and John Holman of the National Science Learning Centre. RSC have done an experiment in which they gave questions from science exams from the last 30 years to present day school students and saw how they did. They think the results show that it is possible to get a good GCSE grade now with superficial knowledge of maths. NSLC was surprised that the experiment did not have a control (although it would be difficult, as they said, to go back in time to test past students).
An RSC press release, with link to their report and a petition to 10 Downing St about reversing the decline in school science, is here.
And the Guardian reports it here, with the chance to try some of the questions. Now, let's see...
1 comment:
Yes, a good working knowledge of Math is vital in today's world. Our standards are now different from that of many years ago when it comes to grading, but that doesn't mean that the education before was substandard.
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