Teachers lack the confidence and resources to deliver meaningful science lessons, an expert says.
A leading science educator is shocked by a study that shows just 20 percent of children in their final year of primary and intermediate schooling are reaching the expected level of the curriculum in science.
The National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement said the figure for children in Year 8 was the worst of any subject in the curriculum.
The founder and chief executive of science education trust, the House of Science, Chris Duggan said the result had huge implications for society.
“It’s shocking and I’m sure that there’ll be a lot of people very disappointed,” she said.
“The Year 4s have improved slightly but the Year 8s it’s still really, really bad. To look at that and see that 80 percent of our Year 8s are going into secondary school with insufficient science to allow secondary teachers to start teaching where they should, that’s a real worry.”
Ms Duggan said many years ago science teaching was well-supported with government-funded science advisors who worked with primary school teachers and specialist resources for use in science lessons.
But that support had not been available for a long time and in addition the introduction of the national standards in reading, writing and maths had sidelined other areas of the curriculum, including science, she said.