The Teaching of Science in Secondary Schools

Abstract

THE following notes on the subject of science teaching in grant-earning secondary schools in England are based on the reports and observations of certain of the Board's inspectors, who were instructed to pay special attention to this matter during the past year. While an attempt will be made to note the principal changes that have occurred in recent years, to point out certain directions in which improvements have taken place, and to direct attention to some existing defects, the time has not yet come when a detailed and systematic survey of the state of scientific instruction in English secondary schools could profitably be undertaken. Since 1902, when the schools of science or “organised science schools” of the Science and Art Directory became the Division A Schools of the Regulations of that year, the number of secondary schools recognised for grant has risen from 348 to its present figure, 841. The earlier portion of this period was one which saw a gradual transformation from curricula which were predominantly scientific and mathematical to curricula in which a more even balance of studies was (secured; and the whole period of growth and transition has been characterised (quite apart from the effect of alterations in the Board's Regulations) by notable changes in the methods, and to some extent also in the aims, of science teaching.