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  3. The Magnetic Attraction of Physics It’s amazing what you can do with a few paperclips and margarine tubs, says Richard West, hea

The Magnetic Attraction of Physics It’s amazing what you can do with a few paperclips and margarine tubs, says Richard West, hea

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问题                      The Magnetic Attraction of Physics
It’s amazing what you can do with a few paperclips and margarine tubs, says Richard West, head of science and physics at St Peter’s school in Wolverhampton. A group of his students has been taking part in the annual "paperclip challenge" at Leicester University, part of the school’s attempts to get pupils interested in physics. These extend to an after-school animal club for year 7s, with a posse of rats, rabbits and geckos to look after. Elforts to "sell physics very hard" to the younger pupils has paid off, and this year the school has a record forty students studying AS-level physics, and helping to make the science results the best of any subject in the school. "Success breeds success," West explains. "We’d like more girls doing physics, but we are proud of what we are achieving. Physics is successful in this school, first and foremost because of the people who teach it." And the animal club? "It makes the pupils love science, so they go on to love physics." What this school is doing goes against the national trend, where the take-up of physics—at school and university level - has been in freefall for the past two decades. It has become a big concern to the scientific and business communities, and to education ministers. Even given the likelihood of extra funding and new initiatives to boost the take-up of science in tomorrow’s budget, the reality is that physics is seen by many teenagers as too difficult. There is a widening gender gap, and attempts to encourage more girls to study physics have stalled.
Two reports funded by the Gatsby charitable foundation and carried out by the Centre for Education and Employment (CEE) have analysed the trend. They have noted that, amid the general drift downwards, there are schools where the numbers taking physics are holding up at twice the national average. Most are grammar and independent schools, which select their intakes and can attract high-quality teachers. However, there are a sizeable number of comprehensive schools enjoying a healthy take-up. Today the Buckingham University-based CEE publishes its third study, Bucking the Trend, reporting on visits to such state schools, to discover what they are doing right, and what other schools can learn from them. The report, by Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson, has a practical aim: to suggest what might be done to reverse  the swing away from physics in schools. The new study contrasts with the first two, both of which made gloomy reading. The first carried the results of a survey which indicated that physics—through redefinition and teacher shortages—was in danger of disappearing as an identifiable subject from much of the state sector. The second showed that A-level physics entries have halved since 1982. This has impacted on universities: more than a quarter of them have stopped teaching physics since 1994. With fewer students studying physics at university, the pool of prospective teachers is also shrinking. For the new report, Smithers and Robinson visited fourteen comprehensives with the highest  proportions of A-level physics students in the earlier national survey (including the two mentioned above), and three at the bottom. In "high-physics" schools, they found physics being taught as a recognisable subject from year 9 onwards, by expert and enthusiastic teachers. For this to happen successfully, they say, a number of things have to come together: a desire to do it, good leadership, a core of well-qualified teachers, a focused and fun curriculum, good results, and a critical mass of able pupils. The head of science at a "low-physics" school that has recently achieved science specialist status told the researchers: "At the moment, there is precious little specialist physics at key stage 3, which leaves year 10 with the mindset that they can’t do physics. When a physicist says to a student ’you are good at this’, the student will believe them. They have confidence in our comments, when they might not have if they were coming from a non-specialist." For the decline in physics to be reversed, it has to be important to the schools, the authors of the report say. The top physics school in the study (which is not identifled)  had turned itself around by appointing a determined head of physics, who restructured  the curriculum and brought together a strong team of staff. In contrast, a school with hardly any pupils doing A-level physics prided itself on its performing arts; pupils were frequently taken out of science lessons for drama and music rehearsals. The report warns that, because there are not enough good physics teachers to go round, some schools may be teaching science, rather than physics as a separate subject, simply because they are unable to recruit specialist staff. "It is a chicken-and-egg situation," says Smithers. "The physicists teaching tend to gravitate to schools where they can teach their subject, rather than the sciences generally. If a school declares itself for physics, and offers specialist teaching, it will find it more possible to attract high-quality physics teachers.
For there to be a major revival of school physics, teacher shortage must be addressed. Not only is it difficult to recruit physics graduates to teaching, it is hard to retain them." Robinson adds: "One reason is that they sometimes find themselves the only physicist in a school straight after training, and all the responsibilities are heaped on their shoulders before they are ready, improving retention would do much to reduce the shortage of physics teachers." Several of the successful schools suggested that they could play a part in smoothing the entry of the newly qualified into teaching. "We’d love to provide a specialist training centre for the newly qualified," says West. The report recommends a feasibility study leading, in the event of a favourable outcome, to the funding of a pilot scheme along these lines.
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