In the bin - Applied and environmental sciences at school
In yet another recent Ofqual overhaul of GCSE and A level examinations, changes have been made to the way in which school science labs are run and assessed, and subjects including environmental science and applied science A levels are under threat of being scrapped from 2017.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is a rising trend in scientific research, from bioinformatics to enzyme-directed chemical synthesis to geoengineering or planetary astronomy – and for good reason: it is effective. By confining ourselves to narrow fields and declining to engage in research that transgresses the boundaries of our disciplines, we miss out on everything that cannot be understood in terms of single disciplines, which is most things. Researchers are more and more aware of this – and yet at the same time, in schools we are heading back to traditional subjects.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is a rising trend in scientific research, from bioinformatics to enzyme-directed chemical synthesis to geoengineering or planetary astronomy – and for good reason: it is effective. By confining ourselves to narrow fields and declining to engage in research that transgresses the boundaries of our disciplines, we miss out on everything that cannot be understood in terms of single disciplines, which is most things. Researchers are more and more aware of this – and yet at the same time, in schools we are heading back to traditional subjects.
Studying science. Upcoming changes to the UK’s GCSE and A-level courses in scientific subjects have wide implications for individual students and society.
Credit: Comaniciu Dan/Shutterstock
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The loss of so-called “soft” subjects such as environmental science has provoked criticism [https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/03/ofqual-provokes-government-scrap-science-practicals], suggesting that less academic students will be underserved, unable to obtain the required grades in the traditional science subjects (physics, chemistry and biology) that will allow them access to scientific or related fields such as nursing or conservation. However, Ofqual claims that their decision to eliminate them has nothing to do with these subjects being “soft”, but arises from difficulties with standardising exams. As only a few thousand students sit these applied A levels, the demand is not considered sufficient to warrant keeping them.
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Environmental Science
This subject covers such topics as energy resources, sustainability and the environmental impacts on health. It overlaps overtly with biological, geological, geographical, atmospheric, physical, and chemical topics, whilst entwining the scientific information into its political, sociological and economic context. And the importance of this should be heavily underlined, as the contextual placement of science is often overlooked by the traditional subjects, where the story of progress is one of uncovering something absolute that was always there waiting.
Instead, I believe the decision-making complications integral to industries such as nuclear energy should be introduced in parallel, if nothing else so that the scientists can sympathise with public concerns (as many don’t) and the policymakers responding to them are scientifically literate (which few are). Also important in the course are the research and investigative skills that allow students to develop an understanding of the demands in data and measurement rigour and how to appropriately weigh and assess scientific evidence. And naturally, the topic of environmental science demands being up to date with recent advances, meaning that the course’s factual content is more frequently revised and the quality standard is high.
Applied Science
This subject, which I am currently teaching, focuses on independent research conducted by the students, the legal and practical delivery of health and safety at work, case studies into medical, environmental, educational, industrial and service science, and hands-on laboratory work. Although the course is sparingly explained in the specification, with no example case studies and huge flexibility, it is designed to allow the deliverer to cater for the interests of the students who are taking it, both as a group and individually, working to a standardised level to explore anything from paint manufacture to radiology, and developing skills that one would normally be trained in whilst working or doing postgraduate research. These may be soft skills, but they are essential ones, and ones that do not come first in the academic route but either later (during postgraduate study), or sometimes not at all. Whilst the scientific knowledge acquired is unpredictable and can therefore only be tested via coursework, the course does include hard scientific knowledge and a mathematical requirement. Instead of testing facts, the exams focus on critical and creative problem-solving using taught scientific techniques, methodology and rigour, engaging in principles rather than crammed facts.
In my opinion, the applied science course opens the door to a perspective of science different from the true/false black/white image that puts off many children who would make valuable scientists. Instead it is resourceful and imaginative, like a hard crossword puzzle that sucks you in and makes you determined to finish it. I would argue that by eliminating applied subjects we are not merely underserving the less academic students, but everybody, reducing the gain in applied skills that are, in the real world, as valuable as academic ones. In fact, we are underserving them already, because students capable of taking the traditional subjects are steered away from considering applied ones on the understanding that they will lower their trading value by stooping to soft subjects. In school, I would never have taken an applied lesson, and yet I would have loved the independent learning and practical dimensions and thrived under it. And if I’d never taught, I would never have read the courses and reconsidered the hard/soft subject story.
Wider implications
There are other ways I think in which these changes underserve – and that is socioeconomically. Now that all students have to do A levels, by limiting the breadth of sciences and science skills we are in danger of creating a bottle-neck. Subjects like physics, chemistry and biology prepare students to go to university and study physics, chemistry, biology (or medicine or biochemistry), but not to get jobs. These students are still missing most job skills. So they have to go to university. And those who do less well in traditional subjects and get lower grades won’t get university places or won’t embrace the experience; they will be stuck, in a climate with mass unemployment and not enough apprenticeships, with a bunch of A levels, no working skills and no experience.
The traditional way to get out of this scenario is to do volunteer work, but this creates another socioeconomic problem – class divide. Whilst the well off can afford to do endless internships for free whilst paying for their own food and travel to gain invaluable industry experience, many can’t, especially when faced with pressures such as family illness or children of their own (and the less well off and less well qualified tend to have babies younger). This can only have one consequence: the diminution of the worth of the degree, and a one-route-to-any-career mentality, forcing people to go back and retrain or buy back into the old-fashioned career-for-life prospect.
Although some exam boards are planning to overhaul the environmental science course in the hopes of saving it from the ruthless sword of Ofqual, it remains under threat, whilst applied science is almost certainly doomed. New changes to laboratory sessions also mean that there are no practical exams, only a lab quota that teachers must sign off. Crucially, this means that poorer schools with fewer resources can (and will) do fewer labs, redistributing their budgets to save on science practicals and so produce students with less experience and less complete understanding than their privately schooled peers – and this, in my opinion, is the kind of consolidating understanding that makes all the difference in university interviews and bridging the school-university leap.
This is well summarised by the Wellcome Trust, who, after consultation with Ofqual on their proposals for the discontinuation of some subjects, asked, “Who chooses to study them?” (Ofqual: GCSE reform consultation Response by the Wellcome Trust August 2013; https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/wtp055604.pdf).
By reducing access to environmental and applied science courses or abolishing them, we thus risk exacerbating social divisions, as well as reducing the life chances of students who are less well off.
This subject covers such topics as energy resources, sustainability and the environmental impacts on health. It overlaps overtly with biological, geological, geographical, atmospheric, physical, and chemical topics, whilst entwining the scientific information into its political, sociological and economic context. And the importance of this should be heavily underlined, as the contextual placement of science is often overlooked by the traditional subjects, where the story of progress is one of uncovering something absolute that was always there waiting.
Instead, I believe the decision-making complications integral to industries such as nuclear energy should be introduced in parallel, if nothing else so that the scientists can sympathise with public concerns (as many don’t) and the policymakers responding to them are scientifically literate (which few are). Also important in the course are the research and investigative skills that allow students to develop an understanding of the demands in data and measurement rigour and how to appropriately weigh and assess scientific evidence. And naturally, the topic of environmental science demands being up to date with recent advances, meaning that the course’s factual content is more frequently revised and the quality standard is high.
Applied Science
This subject, which I am currently teaching, focuses on independent research conducted by the students, the legal and practical delivery of health and safety at work, case studies into medical, environmental, educational, industrial and service science, and hands-on laboratory work. Although the course is sparingly explained in the specification, with no example case studies and huge flexibility, it is designed to allow the deliverer to cater for the interests of the students who are taking it, both as a group and individually, working to a standardised level to explore anything from paint manufacture to radiology, and developing skills that one would normally be trained in whilst working or doing postgraduate research. These may be soft skills, but they are essential ones, and ones that do not come first in the academic route but either later (during postgraduate study), or sometimes not at all. Whilst the scientific knowledge acquired is unpredictable and can therefore only be tested via coursework, the course does include hard scientific knowledge and a mathematical requirement. Instead of testing facts, the exams focus on critical and creative problem-solving using taught scientific techniques, methodology and rigour, engaging in principles rather than crammed facts.
In my opinion, the applied science course opens the door to a perspective of science different from the true/false black/white image that puts off many children who would make valuable scientists. Instead it is resourceful and imaginative, like a hard crossword puzzle that sucks you in and makes you determined to finish it. I would argue that by eliminating applied subjects we are not merely underserving the less academic students, but everybody, reducing the gain in applied skills that are, in the real world, as valuable as academic ones. In fact, we are underserving them already, because students capable of taking the traditional subjects are steered away from considering applied ones on the understanding that they will lower their trading value by stooping to soft subjects. In school, I would never have taken an applied lesson, and yet I would have loved the independent learning and practical dimensions and thrived under it. And if I’d never taught, I would never have read the courses and reconsidered the hard/soft subject story.
Wider implications
There are other ways I think in which these changes underserve – and that is socioeconomically. Now that all students have to do A levels, by limiting the breadth of sciences and science skills we are in danger of creating a bottle-neck. Subjects like physics, chemistry and biology prepare students to go to university and study physics, chemistry, biology (or medicine or biochemistry), but not to get jobs. These students are still missing most job skills. So they have to go to university. And those who do less well in traditional subjects and get lower grades won’t get university places or won’t embrace the experience; they will be stuck, in a climate with mass unemployment and not enough apprenticeships, with a bunch of A levels, no working skills and no experience.
The traditional way to get out of this scenario is to do volunteer work, but this creates another socioeconomic problem – class divide. Whilst the well off can afford to do endless internships for free whilst paying for their own food and travel to gain invaluable industry experience, many can’t, especially when faced with pressures such as family illness or children of their own (and the less well off and less well qualified tend to have babies younger). This can only have one consequence: the diminution of the worth of the degree, and a one-route-to-any-career mentality, forcing people to go back and retrain or buy back into the old-fashioned career-for-life prospect.
Although some exam boards are planning to overhaul the environmental science course in the hopes of saving it from the ruthless sword of Ofqual, it remains under threat, whilst applied science is almost certainly doomed. New changes to laboratory sessions also mean that there are no practical exams, only a lab quota that teachers must sign off. Crucially, this means that poorer schools with fewer resources can (and will) do fewer labs, redistributing their budgets to save on science practicals and so produce students with less experience and less complete understanding than their privately schooled peers – and this, in my opinion, is the kind of consolidating understanding that makes all the difference in university interviews and bridging the school-university leap.
This is well summarised by the Wellcome Trust, who, after consultation with Ofqual on their proposals for the discontinuation of some subjects, asked, “Who chooses to study them?” (Ofqual: GCSE reform consultation Response by the Wellcome Trust August 2013; https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/wtp055604.pdf).
By reducing access to environmental and applied science courses or abolishing them, we thus risk exacerbating social divisions, as well as reducing the life chances of students who are less well off.
