Science of concern (From The Argus)

Science of concern

6:36pm Friday 12th October 2012 in opinion feed By Katy Rice

Anyone who doubts that the state education system is “dumbed down” should assess the level of intellect required to do the science homework set last week for my daughter.

Currently in Year 9 at a state secondary school in Brighton and Hove, she is almost 14 and in the top science set.

Less than a year away from starting her GCSEs, she has been asked to complete a wordsearch containing such challenging words as push, graph, stop, drag, force and distance. It took her about 10 seconds to do.

With this country facing a serious skill shortage in the sciences, needing an extra 10,000 science graduates just to maintain its current industrial position, I think the cause of the problem lies somewhere in that wordsearch.