Report from St Michael’s RC School Billingham
Chris Colclough writes
Twenty First Century Science has allowed teachers to be creative in developing a variety of practical activities that use the talents of students in other curriculum areas, such as the Arts, to express scientific concepts. This has raised the motivation of many students who would otherwise have found 'traditional' science off-putting.
Challenges and support
The suite of courses has so far presented the challenges typical of any new specification. There have been implications for developing appropriate teaching styles, effective debating, gathering resources particularly related to contemporary issues, and tackling 'how science works' through planned lessons.
Support has been available through the exam boards, ASE and the Science Learning Centres. As a pilot school, we have led our regional cluster of ten schools in our local authority. They have found the opportunity to share experiences and good practice valuable.
Student skill development
There has been an increase in student engagement with science issues through debate and responding in 'real time' to issues from news reports. Students have recognised the relevance of lessons to everyday life and have particularly enjoyed discussions around ethical issues. The GCSE Science course has set foundations in terms of developing science skills, such as ‘asking appropriate questions’, ‘recognising limitations in data’, ‘recognising bias ’, and ‘questioning sources of evidence’. This has developed students' scientific literacy.
The GCSE Science course is not content-driven, but empowers young people in making decisions relevant to life. It gives students the basic concepts in science, and allows them to make decisions about the most appropriate Additional Science course matching their aspirations, aptitude and career plans.
Managing the courses
Since the pilot, we have found it more appropriate to teach GCSE Science and Additional Science / Applied Science courses in parallel, so that pupils experience variety in both content and teaching style. However, in order to allow teachers to develop schemes of work and the expertise required for this new curriculum, schools starting the course this year have delivered only the GCSE Science course before delivering Additional Science / Applied Science in Year 11.
The ten Twenty First Century Science schools in our LA are all positive about the impact on engagement with science for students of all ability that the GCSE Science course has had so far.
Student achievement
The expectation is that 80% of students will study two science GCSEs as a minimum, while the most able students have the entitlement to study three Separate Sciences at GCSE. From our pilot experience, students completing Twenty First Century GCSE Science and Twenty First Century Science Additional Science, or Additional Applied Science, have achieved value-added scores beyond our expectations.
Numbers going on to study science post-16 have increased. Our sixth form colleges have found that the skills developed by these courses, along with the science content of the Additional Science course, has well prepared the students for science at AS level.
