New UK Initiative - Make Science Easier

An anonymous reader writes "Examiners in the UK have been told to make science 'easier'. From next year 70% of the paper must consist of 'low demand' questions in the form of multiple choice or similar answers. Currently this type of question makes up some 55% of the test. When the recent A level results were announced, with even more students in the UK getting A grades than ever before, educators were congratulating themselves on improved teaching. 'Jim Sinclair, the Joint Council for Qualifications director, emphatically denied that the changes would lead to a rise in the number achieving grade C - the top grade in the foundation tier. Future results would depend on how the marks were allocated. Dr Sinclair added that the changes would help to stop children being turned off by science.' Even still, it's hard to see the benefit from future science students passing by guessing."

Comments

The Bit About...

[JamesRose]

Congratulating themselves for better teachings, that's bull, every year people get straight grades and you just get all the adults shouting that students are actually really stupid now and that the tests are just getting easier, trust me, at no point do they entertain the idea of the students being better taught.

Re:The Bit About...

[jimstapleton]

Agreed.

The grades aren't important, the learning is.

You want to make math and sciences easier, train your teachers to do a better job.

Everest or a word-search, take your pick!

[Ckwop]

Dr Sinclair added that the changes would help to stop children being turned off by science.

I can't believe he would possibly think this would attract people to science! I very nearly didn't do Physics at A-Level because GCSE science was too easy. They watered down stuff so much that you couldn't possibly reason with it. You could only solve a limited range of problems with the mathematics available and none of them were remotely interesting.

I was sad to see the same was true in A-Level Chemistry. A-Level Chemistry isn't really science, it's more like religion. You learn an enormous table of facts with some spirtual-esc "electron cloud" explanation for it. There's no way to work through it from first principles - there is no understanding and a vague promise it would come some day.

I am convinced that the way to get people in to science is to get down to brass-tax much earlier on; get down to the real physics of what's going on. In my opinion, there is no reason that the bright kids could not be walked through a solution to the Schrodinger Equation's solution for the Hydrogen atom energy levels at sixteen. There is no reason you can't teach them basic calculus either. There's no reason why you can't walk them through how to derive the equations for circular motion.

You see, it's not the details of the mathematics really matters at this early stage but an appreciation how the solution is arrived at. It's seeing that we take a fundamental postulate, which they would establish by experiment in class, and run with it and here's the physics that we come up with. In short, it's showing them that with rigorous application of the scientific method and a few years of training on the mathematics, that all of this interesting stuff can be arrived at with nothing more than a pencil and paper.

That, my friends, is how you really inspire! You do not inspire anybody by making a intellectual Mount Everest in to a word-search.

Simon

Re:Everest or a word-search, take your pick!

[mrchaotica]

It's "-esque" instead of "esc," "brass tacks" instead of "brass tax," and "into" instead of "in to" (in the last sentence). I'm sorry to have to correct you, but it pained me to read those in an otherwise-intelligent post.

Re:Everest or a word-search, take your pick!

[DrLudicrous]

I am convinced that the way to get people in to science is to get down to brass-tax much earlier on; get down to the real physics of what's going on. In my opinion, there is no reason that the bright kids could not be walked through a solution to the Schrodinger Equation's solution for the Hydrogen atom energy levels at sixteen. There is no reason you can't teach them basic calculus either. There's no reason why you can't walk them through how to derive the equations for circular motion.

I disagree with you on this particular point. Yes it is true that you don't want to water things down. But if you are serious about advocating these particular examples, I believe that you are wrong. I know this because, A. I have solved the hydrogen atom starting from the Schrodinger equation, and B. because I have taught high school science in the US, specifically physics, to 15 and 16 year old children of all kinds of ability levels.

The fact of the matter is that while that may have been OK for you to have studied at the age, it most certainly is NOT for the overwhelming majority of students, by which I mean 99.9%. That is a literal number, not figurative. I myself would have been unable to understand the quantum mechanical derivation of the Bohr model of the atom at the age of 16, even if someone had carefully explained it to me. There is just no way to do that and impart deep understanding of both the process and the end result. You are better off just presenting the solution, because that at least is something that students can understand. 16 year olds (again, 99.9% of them) are not going to understand calculus (did I mention it is multivariable vector calculus in 3 dimensions?), let alone partial differential equations (e.g. Schrodinger) and spherical harmonics, all of which are needed to understand the "walkthrough".

Basically what I am saying is that it is unrealistic to expect even a minority of students to understand such high level concepts that they are not taught in the United States until the sophomore and junior years of university, and even then only to a select number of students (in physics, electrical engineering, and maybe a few others). That is a good way to turn students off to science- making the barrier unnecessarily high. Sometimes, it is OK to gloss over the math, because there is nothing to be gained there. Most students, even the bright ones, are not going to be come physicists, so why subject them to something that is so specific?

Doing a derivation on something like circular motion is much more appropriate. Why? Because it is something that students can relate to (they have all experienced circular motion, centripetal force etc.), unlike quantum mechanics which is inherently non-intuitive, and the math is orders of magnitude simpler (algebra vs spherical harmonics). On that point I am in agreement. But you must be careful about how you phrase your argument and present your viewpoint because the minute you start spouting off about showing students how to derive the Bohr model of the atom from the Schrodinger equation, you are going to turn people because they don't even know what the Schrodinger equation is. We don't want to dumb down science, but at the same time it needs to be accessible to students beyond the future Stephen Hawkings of the world.

There's no such thing as a "UK" exam.

[stevedcc]

Whilst the examiners in question may be living and working in the UK, there is no such thing as a "UK" exam: Scotland has a completely different examination system, run by a different exam board. Admittedly, the Times article just talks about GCSEs (exam standard in England and Wales at age 16) and never makes any comparison to the Scottish equivalent (fair and balanced reporting? the Times? Tories don't care about Scotland!)

Most people in England seem to wonder why so many Scots want independence.... but don't know the difference between UK (England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland), Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), and England (a catch all, that normally means whatever combination of the above countries happens to be convienient at the time).

Re:There's no such thing as a "UK" exam.

[stevedcc]

they've exported their politicians to England to fuck up the English system

Thank you for proving my point: there is no English parliamentary system, if you want one, go get one, but complaining about Scots in the UK parliament just demonstrates how distorted the use of the word "English" often is

i was hoping

[harlemjoe]

/.ers could guide me to some good resources for homeschooling.

I have an 11 year old sister who recently shocked me by being unable to divide by 12 (to convert inches to feet). She could perform the math operation trivially when she was 8 or 9. If anything, she's backsliding in regular school. With exams like this, I fear for her performance. Earlier today my mom and I had a bitter fight over whether we should just homeschool her until the XIth grade when hopefully she can take the IB.

Any thoughts? Feedback? Resources?

Re:i was hoping

[everphilski]

If both of your mom (and dad?) are not 110% into it, then it could be worse than just keeping her in school. Not only that, but your sister needs to be into it too. It takes a lot of hard work not to slack off when you are at home.

My parents got 'homeschooling fever' when I hit high school, my siblings are all a lot younger. I did it through high school, they did it anywhere from first grade all the way through to the end of high school. It works if everyone is on board. At the start, I was not, but that's a long story. As a high schooler I taught myself more than my mom taught me. Which is good, you comprehend a lot more that way.

So long and short: it works, but make sure you are all on the same page and on board with the idea. It ain't cheap. The best math is probably Saxon Math. A lot of home schoolers go with the Abeka system of educational materials but there are others like Bob Jones and such. You may find yourself off better keeping her in school and tutoring her on the side.

Re:i was hoping

[DerekLyons]

Any thoughts?

Yes - as much as you may care for youe sister, it's not your decision to make.

Euclid said it best...

[FlyByPC]

"There is no royal road to geometry." (Or science.)

Dumb science down, and you get dumb scientists. What we need is a way to make it more interesting -- and show students how, for example, conducting an experiment or programming a simulation on a computer can be fun. Once they're interested -- and the mathematics involved have a clear purpose rather than being just rote memorization of arcane formulae -- Science suddenly becomes something they *want* to do.

There may be no "royal road" to science -- but there's nothing saying that we can't make the trip more enjoyable, and encourage more travelers at the same time.

As a side benefit, science is a great way to teach critical thinking (which IMHO is the whole point of education).

Re:Euclid said it best...

[khallow]

Still, I bet the population of people who would find it fun is considerably larger than the portion that gets a chance to find out.

New exam:

[styryx]

Question 1) Schroedinger was famous for his:
a. Hat?
b. Cat?
c. Kat?

Re:New exam:

[faloi]

That's an unfair question, what with the new easier spelling rules coming down the pipe. Either that or we have to allow for both b and c to be correct.

Re:New exam:

[Riktov]

The correct answer is either a. or b. Or rather, it's BOTH a. and b., until the test actually gets graded. Before that, it's impossible to know.

Re:Typical slashdot elitism.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to read *3* *books* *a* *week* on average. Not picture books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the technical. You might want to try reading four books a week.

food for thought.

[apodyopsis]

see the physics GCSE paper here: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/exampaper.pdf

several comments (and food for thought):

1. multiple choice questions are proving popular for one reasons only - they can be marked by computer and are quicker and cheaper to process because of this.

2. unless you think that people are getting a lot more intelligent in a couple of generations then you must assume that either (a) the exams are easier or (b) that students are being thought only how to pass exams (this is the view held by several teacher friends of mine)

3. my first university course (which was a 3 year course in the late 80s) is now a 4 year course - this additional year is used as a remedial course to get students back up to the level they used to be at. universities certainly do not believe that more students are doing much better then they ever have previously.

4. schools are busy reducing the number of students doing maths (and further maths), chemistry and physics as much as possible as in general students get lower grades - in turn this lowers the performance of the school as a whole in the league tables. in other words it is hard to get people to do their jobs properly when their wages rely on them doing it badly.

5. employers have also been lamenting the quality of school leavers in many subjects - maths, spelling, english.

its a pretty dismal state of affairs in the UK, and it seems to be repeating itself in the EU and in the colonies.

i think much of the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the government who seem to delight in meddling in the schools at every opportunity. with the international baccalaureates being introduced soon who knows what will happen next?

Re:food for thought.

[mdwh2]

2. unless you think that people are getting a lot more intelligent in a couple of generations then you must assume that either (a) the exams are easier or (b) that students are being thought only how to pass exams (this is the view held by several teacher friends of mine)

Or it could be they're being taught better generally. But actually there's another possibility - the rates are only an average for all GCSEs, and one possibility is that people are switching to easier subjects. So it's not that any given exam is easier, but that some subjects are easier to get an A.

In fact, The proportion of students gaining five good (A*-C) GCSEs including English, maths, science and a language, has fallen from 61 per cent in 1996 to 44 per cent last year.

Obviously it's still bad if some subjects are easier than others, but it's wrong to assume that all subjects are getting easier, and in fact, science seems to be one of the hard subjects. So ironically, making science easier may help to address the problem.

(Though I do love the way that when exam grades in those subjects are falling, people assume it must be due to students getting stupider or teaching standards falling - why aren't all the moaners complaining that English, Maths and Science exams are getting harder?)

No calculus?

[Colin Smith]

There is no reason you can't teach them basic calculus either. No calculus??? I did calculus at 'O' grade in Scotland. Oh come on, it isn't even that hard.

Re:No calculus?

[Tango42]

There was no calculus on the syllabus when I did GCSE Maths about 5 years ago. To get the top grades on the coursework, however, you had to include something that wasn't on the syllabus, so I did learn a little calculus in a one-on-one session with my teacher after school (just what I needed for that particular problem... derivatives of trig functions and the quotient rule, if memory serves).

While doing simple calculus is pretty easy, if it was taught at GCSE it would have to be taught as formulae (eg. d/dx(ax^n)=anx^(n-1)) which you learn by rote with little to no understanding of where it comes from (while the teachers might go through a basic derivation, it would only be for the sake of the top pupils, no-one else would understand it). I really don't see the point of learning it like that.

Re:No calculus?

[johnw]

I did calculus at 'O' grade in Scotland. Oh come on, it isn't even that hard. I took some of my year 9 (13 year olds) set through some basic calculus in the spring term of this year, *because they asked*. It is indeed not that hard, and I find that they really like stuff when you say, "This isn't on the syllabus but..." Alas, there's just far too little time available to do that. The syllabus is cram full with lots of irrelevant crap which they'll never use again.

On another similar occasion we did solving simple cubic equations. We'd done quadratics and they were still interested so we went on. Oh for a syllabus where that sort of thing was possible more of the time.

The authors of the national curriculum could have learned a valuable lesson by reading "Three men in a boat" by Jerome K Jerome. In it the three men are planning a boat trip up the Thames and sit down to make a list of all the things they could do with on the trip. When the list is complete they realise that a boat able to carry all the stuff won't be able to navigate the Thames, so they throw that list away and instead compose another list of all the things which they can't do without.

This is the mistake of the national curriculum. It was well intentioned and had a good objective, but unfortunately a whole lot of people then listed all the things that could do to be in it, resulting in something which needs significantly more time to be taught than there is in the school year. What was missing from the development process was the second step. They should then have started again and made a list of the things which we can't do without, with an absolute maximum ceiling on teaching time of 1/3 of the school year. That would then have met the objective of core skills, whilst still leaving time for teachers to do their jobs and actually educate children.

End rant.

Testing reasoning (not memory) w/ multiple choice

[G4from128k]

I had a Biology professor that could make multiple choice science tests that actually tested scientific reasoning skills (not just memory skills). He'd present the results of a single experiment and then offer a multiple statements that might (or might not) be derivable from the outcome of the experiment. The devilish part (and the part that tested reasoning versus memory) was that many of the statements would be true, but NOT derivable from the experiment. Students that memorized facts and picked the true statements based on their memory of those facts would get the answer wrong.

Of course, I suspect that the Brits want to turn science into a set of dumb facts, and that would be a shame because it misses the entire point of science.

Good students losing out

[seniorcoder]

Just hand out a pass or a fail. Don't give grades. That's my theory. If you really are going to give grades, please don't dumb down the tests. Keep the tests real but adjust the scores upwards so that the median gives the students encouragement. One major difference between the UK and the USA is that, in the UK, above 50% is considered OK. In the USA, anything below 80% is starting to look not so good. So I dumbed down my tests in the USA to increase the scores instead of merely adjusting the scores upwards by a fixed percentage. In retrospect, I think this was the wrong thing to do. Anyway, the problem with dumbing down the tests or merely upping the scores is that the really good students shine less.

Re:Good students losing out

[DerekLyons]

Just hand out a pass or a fail. Don't give grades. That's my theory.

Anyway, the problem with dumbing down the tests or merely upping the scores is that the really good students shine less.

 
Is it a symptom of the failure of education that you don't see the logical inconsistency between the two statements? If you want really good students to shine more, then handing out a simple pass/fail grade is precisely the way not to do it.

Re:Typical slashdot elitism.

[edittard]

Six munfs ago I cuddent even spel enjineer - and now I is one!

Test isn't just easy: it's wrong

[Eivind]

The example test given is horribly stupid. It is a mixup of easy trivial answers, with a few where arguably more than one answer is correct, and some are outrigth wrong.

for example, you're asked what kind of radiation will damage eyes and cause skin-cancer. Now obviously they want UV as the "rigth" answer, but infact xray will *also* cause that in the rigth dosis. so both are correct.

Or how about this gem: (question 19)

What is the advantage of using digital signals in radio-broadcast ?
a) digital signals travel quicker than analogue.
b) digital signals carry more information than analogue.
c) analogue signals travel more quickly than digital.
d) analogue signals can carry more information than digital.

The "correct" answer is a), digital signals travel quicker. Which is complete bullshit. A analogue or digital signal sent down say an electrical cable will both travel at the speed of C in that material, simple as that. Boggles the mind.

If this shows the competence of the teachers, no wonder the pupils end up ignorant of science....

Re:Test isn't just easy: it's wrong

[xaxa]

Maybe that's showing the incompetence of the journalist? The correct answer is B.

The next question is worse, question 20:

Digital technologies, such as CD and DVD players, have increased
A) the speed at which sound travels
B) the quality of sound you can hear
C) the range of frequencies you can hear
D) the loudness of sound which can be produced
Apparently the answer is B, but C and D are also correct (at least, compared to vinyl, which is what CDs replaced).

Look at 23!
Assume the orbits of Pluto and Earth are circular. Earth is 150 million km from the sun. Pluto is 5913 million km from the sun. What is the smallest distance between Pluto and Earth in million km?
A) 5913 + 150
B) 5913 - 150
C) 5913 x 150
D) 5913 / 150
Apparently they don't think 16 year olds can count any more!

The rest of the paper (the higher tier bit) isn't so bad. It's a shame it's still multiple choice though.

Re:Test isn't just easy: it's wrong

[xaxa]

The range of frequencies that can be stored by the medium might depend if it's analogue or digital. Obviously digital can store "22kHz" easily, but the needle on a record can't vibrate that fast (or whatever). The loudness on a vinyl isn't unlimited, again the needle can't vibrate far enough for some sounds.

This is why I hate multiple choice, it's /very/ difficult to choose three wrong answers that are definitely wrong.

E is, indeed, correct :-)

Re:Test isn't just easy: it's wrong

[Eivind]

no, b is wrong. Digital does not, in general, carry more information than analogue. The sound is analogue at the source, at best the sampling-process preserves all the information that is there (atleast the part the human ear is capable of hearing) but the sampling-process certainly doesn't add new information that wasn't there in the analogue input. (if it did, we'd call that 'noise')

There are advantages offcourse, no idea why they didn't mention one of them. For example:
digital sound can be transported, stored and manipulated by computers.
digital sound does not degrade aslong as the transmission and storage-systems are adequate.
digital sound is unsesnitive to noisy electric environments, aslong as the noise is under bit-error levels.
You can use error-correcting on digital sound. CDs, DVDs and DAB-radios all do.
digital sound is independent of media and can be moved from one media to another without quality-loss.

It's not as if it'd been hard to come up with a real advantage rather than the bogus ones....

behold: "The Campaign for Real Education"

[apodyopsis]

I refer you to the campaign for real education at http://www.cre.org.uk/.

A lot of concerned parents and education professionals. Their website is a mine of information and comparisons on this subject.

All the information you could want and only a click away.

Make it *harder*, to make it more popular

[Richard_J_N]

Even when I did GCSE's 12 years ago, the science exam was trivially easy. Admittedly I'm quite a good scientist, but I found the paper simple to the point of being insulting - having worked for 3 years for it, I objected to being asked stupid questions such as "Here is a picture of some plastic water pipes. Why are they made of plastic?". It seems to me that:

1)In order to make science "more interesting", we should make it more rigorous, and more challenging. At the moment, it's just dull (unless the teachers can ignore the syllabus and not focus on the exams). Health and safety mania doesn't help. [I was lucky: my teachers had a healthy contempt for the more idiotic rules - we were always sensible, but didn't treat 0.1 molar acids as being more dangerous in the lab than in the kitchen]

2)We shouldn't worry so much about less able students being put off science; we should care about the bright ones being put off.

3)A C is not a decent pass grade - it's the lowest grade that isn't a "fail". D,E,F grades are worthless. Likewise, it's simply absurd to consider doing A-level physics without also doing maths.

4)You can't run before you can walk. The current approach is to supplant the "dry" things like mechanics by "sexy" things such as Fusion,Quantum,etc. But the "hot topics" are too hard, so they get covered at a very simplistic level. That just isn't satisfying - there's none of the excitement that comes from suddenly *understanding* how (part of) the real world works.

Currently, in a vain attempt to make everyone aware of the basics of science, we're denying our brightest pupils the ability to actually *do* real science. And by dumbing it down (either by making it very easy, or only covering the "sexy" stuff), there's no thrill of actual discovery left.

A simple rant.

[COMON$]

You would think they would learn from the US educational system (Wait put your stones down people and let me finish). I have known a lot of teachers, son of a teacher here and graduated from a college of primarily education grads.

So what I hear a lot about is NOT teaching better but increasing grades and look where that has gotten the US. A generation of spoon fed kids who get pissed when they realize the college they are in tries to challenge them. I graduated HS back in '98 and the shift was well under way then, more benefits for the 'slow' kids, less for the gifted. If you are 'slow' (don't read handicapped here), you get special teachers and special dummed down classes for you, study hall breaks and whatnot, then you are rewarded for having a 3.5+ GPA. Then there are other people (not saying we are gifted) but worked our asses off taking advanced math and physics in high school. We get 3.5+ or higher but it doesn't matter because the curve is killed and weighted classes didn't exist. Luckily we have ACT and SAT to even things out just a little but because the classes were dummed down we are unprepared for the ACT/SAT. A good bright student can teach themselves how to take the entrance exams but then why did they go to HS in the first place?

As far as I can tell with our recent programs initiated, this has only gotten worse since I graduated and students have gotten lazier. I remember a prof of mine explaining comprehensive exams at the undergrad level. Piece of paper, write down what you learned in this class. I didn't take any test like that but you see the point. We teach kids now how to cram and get good grades, we don't teach them to have a passion for the material and explore their world. Personally my kids will go to private school, of my choosing where I can look and see what teaching methods are used and the kind of student that makes it through the system. You should learn something, not just feel good about yourself, a good teacher can help both but unfortunately even the best teacher can be beat down by bureaucracy. Perhaps if enough of us support private schools the State will figure out what a sucessful program is and start enforcing educational standards than Kansas idiocracy.

Re:A simple rant.

[mrthejud]

Sometimes it is out of the teachers hands. I am a second year teacher and because of this in my province my students need to take the provincial exam. I personally gave a girl a 30% in the class, the test was worth 40% of her final mark. I found out just the other day that she ended up with a 51%. While talking to the principal about the whole thing he mentioned that every kid should try the class because then they at least have a shot at it and just may get it "whether the mark is legit or not". And that is where the frustration is for me because as a teacher its damn near impossible to fail a child now. The rumour on the street (well the teaching street) is that marks as low as 42% are now being rounded up to a 50%. A friend of mine once said, "When a child is born we should hand them their birth certificate and their high school diploma because thats what education is turning into."

Re:A simple rant.

[bzipitidoo]

Personally my kids will go to private school

Careful there. Don't take it for granted that the education at a private school is better. I went to one and it was very hit and miss. Some great teachers, and some terrible teachers. The real eye-opener was hearing that we were the only ones who went there for a better education. Everyone else was there to make connections with rich, powerful, and important people. Part of that was making yourself look like you were worth knowing. Tense atmosphere there. Succeed or die. Some went with the 2nd option. No mercy for failure. People who left were forgotten as if they had never existed. Very weird to mention someone who was there last year but didn't return and get a blank look and a "who?" in response. Watch Dead Poet's Society, that movie is dead on.

Re:A simple rant.

[porcupine8]

I will second this. One positive effect that voucher systems have had in some areas is that once private schools open themselves up to scrutiny by accepting vouchers, some have been found to be so deficient that parents realized that the "failing" public schools were actually better, pulled their kids out in droves, and the crappy private schools closed. Private does not mean better - research every school individually.

Re:A simple rant.

[MBGMorden]

There are also a number of private schools, especially in the US, whose sole existence is there to provide religious foundation in education. The most popular private school in my area didn't have teachers - they had monitors that plugged in video cassettes of the "teachers" doing lessons for that class. The education received there was wholly inferior to the nearby public school (many of which aren't as bad as you'd think), but the private school always had it's doors full because a) they worked religion into everything and b) it was a very racist area of the country, and the private school had very, very few minorities attending. I know of several female friends of mine who were moved over to the private school when starting high school to protect them during the "promiscuous years".

Public schools in the US get a bad reputation that in many cases simply isn't deserved.

Re:A simple rant.

[Hognoxious]

Did they teach you about the magic "e" that makes the previous vowel longer? Or subject-verb agreement?

Back on topic.

[Corwn of Amber]

Hey, science is easy. Dead easy. The problem is that science is taught as a religion. "Remember things" is all we've ever asked to do. In the eight years it took me to get out of Secondary School Hell, I've never been given the occasion to actually TEST by the Scientific Method any idea I've had. There were answers to all my questions already, but I just might have remembered SOMEthing if I'd discovered it myself!

But teaching Science in that way would make kids learn that there are effects and causes to everything, and maybe even that they can all be discovered and modelled. That is very near critical thinking, thus dangerous. Not going to happen at this point in this world. Maybe later, but I'm not counting on that...

The news is about "The UK is going to lower its requirements regarding what science facts kids have to know before they can get unemployed." Big deal.

Science paper or papers-please paper?

[mattpalmer1086]

What about question 6:

"Identification using eyes. Anne looks in the mirror at her eye. Which part is used to identify her?"

What has this got to do with science? Identification of people by their eyes? Big brother says "train 'em up early".

Re:Science education (and education in general)...

[MontyApollo]

>>The average IQ is for many populations is roughly ~100

100 is average IQ by design. Scores are normalized so that 100 is always average.

There is more to education than rote learning and memorization. You learn how to learn, how to problem solve, how to think critically, how to express ideas better, how to write better, etc...

It also does expand your mind. You might not remember all the facts you learned in 7th grade biology, but conceptually you understand it better and will be better able to process information concerning biology better later on. This could come in handy for example when discussing a medical procedure with your doctor. One tends to take this knowledge for granted, but if you never learned it then things like veins, arteries, blood cells, etc... would all just sound like the rest of the jargon the doctor was saying.

We did this in the USA

[JRHelgeson]

Here in the USA in the 1980's we made a major push to get science taught to school kids. Every one of us kids thought we would grow up to become astronauts. The result is now we have a generation of cynics who still can't point out planet Earth on a map of the globe.

Prepare for a tragedy

[Spy der Mann]

Guessing around isn't going to be very helpful when they suddenly find themselves in real world problems! hah!

Re:Multiple choice tests are the worst

[porcupine8]

Multiple choice tests *can* be very well-done. They can be very difficult, they can test for deep-level understanding and reasoning rather than factual knowledge.

However, the few studies that have looked at standardized tests in the US have found that they absolutely, 100% do NOT do these things, and I'm sure the UK isn't much better, especially if they make them easier. Heck, in the US it's rare to find standardized tests that actually test for the same things that are listed in the state standards. The standards themselves these days are full of pretty language about understanding and reasoning and process skills, but the tests are almost entirely fact-regurgitation.