Is the Science Curriculum Sexy Enough?

The number of pupils taking A-levels in the hard sciences - chemistry, physics and maths - has dropped dramatically over the past 10 years. University science departments are closing ‘due to lack of demand’. Some suggest the solution is to make the curriculum more relevant to pupils’ everyday life by emphasising a more practical, hands-on approach or replacing endless facts and dull methodology with popular scientific debates about the ethics of GM food and genetic cloning. Will this ‘sexing up’ of the science curriculum save the subject? Will the content of science and the scientific method be squeezed out by ethics, citizenship or even edutainment?

Join Claire Fox of the IoI, Mary Ratcliffe of the Science Learning Centre South East, Ralph Levinson, lecturer in science education at the Institute of Education, University of London, Conrad Lichtenstein, Professor of Molecular Biology at Queen Mary, University of London, David Perks, head of physics at Graveney School, London, and Julian Wigley, assistant headteacher and science teacher at a Birmingham comprehensive, to discuss how to save school science.