My first reaction was 'that's not news!'. Anyone working in science education has known for years that biology classes tend to be girl-heavy, chemistry tends to be a 50/50 split and physics is almost always male dominated. We've made quite a lot of progress on this front at my current school. When I started here almost 5 years ago, we had a couple of girls in the A-level and IB sets. We currently have over 25 girls studying post-16 physics. In face one of our upper 6th IB sets is only girls.
So what's changed? I think what has made a huge difference is that we have a department staffed by physicists who are enthusiastic about the subject. We don't just teach the stuff you need to pass the exam, we have a whole range of extra-curricular activities, particularly the astronomy club and the solar car, which help students see that physics isn't just some dry science that you do in a lab, but is actually a hugely exciting subject which can take you in a variety of directions.
However, it's not just girls who seem more interested in physics. We have almost twice as many post-16 students of any sex than we did 5 years ago, and I think that's the important point. Surely we want everyone to consider the sciences as a career option, and we need to start by looking at the teachers.
Over the course of 11 years working in 3 different schools I have met at least 20 PGCE science teachers. How many do you think were physicists? Go on, take a guess.
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If we want students to be excited by physics we need the specialist, passionate teachers and there just aren't enough of them out there.
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