From Hackney to Westminster
On Thursday morning 3 May, Baroness Walmsley visited Haggerston School for Girls in Hackney. This is one of the 75 pilot schools teaching Twenty First Century Science courses since September 2003. (Now there are about 900.) Baroness Walmsley was there as a guest of the Head of Science Sheila Curtis and Headteacher Maggie Kalnins. Andrew Hunt, one of the co-Directors of the C21 project joined them.
Later the same day, Baroness Walmsley contributed to the Lords’ debate on science education. Here are two extracts from her speech, taken from Hansard:
“This morning I visited Haggerston School in Hackney where the new 21st century science GCSE is being taught. I thank the girls, head, teachers and the school secretary for making me so welcome. I saw classes taking the applied science programme and the additional science. Both classes were engaged and interested. It was clear that they did plenty of practical work, mainly inside the laboratory. Both courses are very discursive so I worry a little about students for whom English is not their mother tongue. (See this response from Haggerston) However, the teaching vehicles were varied and interesting and I had no qualms about the scientific rigour of both courses.
“Those of us who learnt science the old way need to remember that today’s schools are teaching science to all children, many of whom would never have learnt it in the old days, because today’s young citizen is even more affected by science than we were. Maggie Kalnins, the head of the school I visited this morning, made a very interesting comment. She said, ‘I think this new curriculum will bring a wider range of types of people into science’. I hope that it does.”
You can find Baroness Walmsley’s full speech and those of others at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldhansrd/text/70503-0009.htm
