Bring on the science superstars

Dave Madden, teacher and writer

Here are the results of a highly unscientific survey of school student attitudes to science.

Of the 25 pupils in an average Year 10 class (that is 14 year olds) in an average state school in middle England, polled this week, fewer than 25 per cent admitted to enjoying science at school. Just 16 per cent - or 4 – intend to study science at a higher level or will consider a career in science or engineering. Just one embarrassed young woman confessed to attending the school’s recent Science Week activities, which included hands-on rat dissection and experiments with industrial quantities of liquid nitrogen.

And the class’s explanation for this disaffection? Variously: boring teachers and teaching, complexity (“chemistry is just too hard”), and, the big one – peer pressure. Science is just not cool.

Yet – and this is the frustrating irony – the same group spontaneously agreed that the biggest issue facing their generation was not terrorism, or the state of the world economy, but climate change and the green technologies that might reverse it.

Of course, this is not an exclusively UK phenomenon. “Young People and Science”, a rather more exhaustive survey of this issue, conducted for the European Commission and published as a Eurobarometer report last October, supports the same basic finding – that latent interest in science and technology issues does not translate into higher education preferences or career aspirations.

Revealingly, whilst 90 per cent of respondents to the Eurobarometer report agreed that young people’s interest in science is essential for our future prosperity, two-thirds of the same young people agreed that science classes at school are not appealing enough. Sound familiar?

In response, EU science commissioner Janez Potocnik commented that whilst there is a huge reservoir of interest and support for science among young people, their “low interest in engineering and scientific studies is a major concern.”

Meanwhile, the developing economies of India, China, and elsewhere in Asia are vastly increasing their output of science and technology graduates. The UK now finds itself in the position that fees paid by overseas students are the only way for some university science departments to maintain their viability – British students aren’t interested.

Perhaps in a putative knowledge economy, we should be glad to make money by selling education. But clearly there is a fundamental cultural problem here in Europe. And whilst policy makers grapple with its apparent intractability, perhaps there is an opportunity for scientists and educators to square the circle themselves.

This month, science companies across the UK sent staff into schools to support Science Week projects. They are part of an army of 19,000 volunteers who make up the Science and Engineering Ambassadors scheme, organised through STEMNET (the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths Network), which is in turn funded by the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills. The scheme embraces science and technology from snow board designers to web developers, pharmacists to rocket scientists. More than half the Ambassadors are under 35 and 40 per cent are women.

UK science minister, Paul Drayson says the government wants every school in the country to have access to their own ‘science hero’ by 2011.

Well, if not heroes, then role models at least. Real scientists, doing real science in schools, bringing a whiff of glamour and celebrity and excitement. They cannot come soon enough.

Back in middle England, the whole school is preparing for its annual day out.  The coach to Manchester United’s football museum at Old Trafford is booked up. No takers yet for the radiotelescope at Jodrell Bank, or Darwin Week at Cambridge University. Perhaps next year…

Dave Madden is a teacher and a writer.