Fin de siècle

Abstract

Welcome to 1999 - the Year of Decision. The Year of the Eclipse and Millenium Doom, at the end of which all our computers will seize up and wonder why Queen Victoria isn't answering her e-mails. But if we survive this the Year 2000 will usher in yet another National Curriculum, redesigned Advanced levels ('academic') and GNVQs ('vocational') and the Modularization of Everything. So what are you, dear reader, going to do about it all? At this stage I must apologise to readers outside the immediate territories to which the above applies and for whom the exact details are irrelevant. However, there are some general issues, which might be of interest. Physics is not the most popular school subject in Europe - or even North America (if my favourite sitcom Third Rock from the Sun can be relied upon to give an accurate picture of current US educational issues). The decisions referred to in the opening sentence are ones that will be made by the UK Government on the advice (or possibly against the advice) of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). In the summer and autumn of 1998, QCA held a number of semi-formal focus groups in which teachers and others considered how the current National Curriculum was working, and how it might be improved. The QCA is due to produce draft proposals this month and will decide upon its recommendations to the Secretary of State after a period of 'informal consultations'. The Secretary of State's proposals will then be open to formal consultation from April to August. Decisions will be made and published in the autumn and implemented in September 2000. I would suspect (and hope) that the readers of this journal are amongst the most concerned and best informed physics teachers in the UK. They might, I suppose, be the only physics teachers left in the UK. And I hope that they will take an active part in these consultations. The Institute of Physics has had a Working Party beavering away on what physics in a National Curriculum should be like for over two years. This group has also worked with representatives of the Royal Society and the professional associations for chemistry and biology. The IoP Post-16 Initiative has recognized that, however brilliant their eventual output may be, if physics pre-16 is seen as dull and irrelevant their work will have far less of an impact. The IoP National Curriculum Working Group has now finished its work and produced seven papers targeted at different audiences - teachers, teacher trainers, QCA etc. They are brief, to the point - and fairly radical. They may have little effect on the next National Curriculum - the political feedback loop is so much longer than the whirligigs of time experienced in the technical and economic spheres. The proposals are not entirely local in their application. Southern Britain is not the only place where school physics could do with a shake-up. If readers want to know about the IoP's thinking to make comments, use the ideas as part of their responses to QCA consultation or see how they chime in with school physics in France, USA, China... then copies of the papers are available from the Education Department, Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London W1N 3DH. Ken Dobson Honorary Editor