Is Physics hard, or hard work.

Something that I have been pondering over the last couple of months is how should we talk to students about Physics?  Should we tell them that it's hard?

As part of a summer school at Think Physics, I shared the comments from the IOP discussion workshop 'Science: It's a people thing' with some Year 12 girls who were studying A-level Physics or Level 3 Engineering.

One of the comments in the workshop is:

"Physics is really hard.  If you want to get good grades, you are better off doing biology or chemistry'.

Quite a few of the girls disagreed strongly with this comment.  We had an interesting discussion about why they thought that biology or chemistry were as hard, if not harder, than physics.  Mostly they thought that Biology could be harder because of the sheer volume of information that they had to understand, whereas Physics could be harder because you had to understand some counter-intuitive ideas.

I would tend to agree with them.  I think that by the time you have got to A-level, most subjects are hard to do well in - certainly those in the Russell group's facilitating subjects list.

On the other hand...

Back in 2008 research carried out by the CEM centre for SCORE showed that, given the same starting points at GCSE, students did better in some subjects than others.

Taken from: Relative Difficulty of examinations in different subjects. Coe et al (2008)

This data in this graph was taken from examinations taken prior to 2008, just before Ofqual was being formed.  Given the large number of changes currently working their way through the system, it would be interesting to carry out a similar study now, and perhaps in a couple of years. (There is mention in this article that the work was repeated three years later with similar results - but I have been unable to find any publications with the new data.)

So, what should teachers tell students?  Is Physics hard?  Or is it hard work?

What A-levels should schools recommend students on the basis of this graph?  When the report was published there was a suggestion that schools would encourage students to take subjects at the left hand side so that they maximised their grades (and schools maximised their average point score per entry).  That is one of the downsides of the results based accountability culture in schools.

There isn't a great deal of difference between any of the sciences, so why do some schools apparently encourage girls into biology?

What practical assessment?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a high stakes accountability system will tend to prevent accurate teacher assessment.  Or at least, that is what Ofqual and the exam boards would like us believe.

Having talked to many teachers about controlled assessment (and having been involved in supervising coursework) I think that actually Ofqual and the exams boards are probably correct.  Current controlled assessment measures very little of a student's ability to skillfully carry out practical work, and is overly focussed on one (or at most two) practical experiences.  The time taken to ensure that the whole class completes the appropriate work, with the appropriate supervision eats into the time that could be used to teach content, or do other practical work.  (And involves numerous catch-up sessions after school and during holidays if my child's experience of year 11 science coursework is anything to go by). 

So Ofqual have, at one fell swoop, removed teacher assessed practical work from A-levels from 2015.  Instead, students will be expected to develop 12 practical skill sets through carrying out a minimum of 12 named practicals.  The skills are the same for all exam boards, but they are free to choose their own practicals.  The skills are given in appendix 5c of the subject criteria, but until the draft specifications are published (towards the end of June) we won't know what the practicals are.

Helen Rogerson published a blog outlining her view on the loss of practical assessment and I think that she makes a very good point. 

But...

What if the removal of examined practical assessment means that teachers will stop doing practical work?  If we don't assess practical work, then even though teachers think that it is educationally desirable, they might stop doing it.  Senior leaders might decide that if practical work isn't assessed then why spend large part amounts of money on science equipment and consumables?

This appears to be the view of the Wellcome trust, various university academics and SCORE.  

Again, I can see why they are worried.  It may be that practical science becomes limited to the 12 named practicals in the specs - much like the teaching of English literature appears to be limited to the books named in the new GCSE specs.  Teachers will plan for, and teach, only the practicals that they have to provide evidence of the students carrying out.  On the other hand, anecdotal evidence from teachers who have switched from GCSE sciences to iGCSE sciences have said that the removal of controlled assessment work has led to an increase in the amount of practical work that they do.

Before we can start to discuss the effect of the changes to practical work it would be helpful to know what practical work A-level students currently do.  Michael Gove and Ofqual have referred to reports of Universities complaining that A-levels don’t prepare students well enough for university.  It may be that, in some schools, practical work has already reduced to only that required to complete the controlled assessment part of the course.

In schools like that, it may be that having to do 12 practicals over the space of 2 years might actually be an improvement.

Without data though, we just don’t know.

To that end, I am intending to carry out some preliminary research into what practical work in science (and particularly physics) is currently planned and carried out at A-level in a number of local educational establishments.  I’m hoping that I will be able to revisit the schools as the changes to A-levels are made and see how they are responding to the new structure.

Watch this space!

How many students get G?

Will there be lots of students who are 'demotivated' by the new grading structure for the GCSEs?

On 16th November the BBC published a story about the new grading structure that will be brought in for the revamped GCSEs in (initially) English and Maths in 2015 and then in the other Ebacc subjects in 2016.

The new structure will see the loss of letter grades (A* to G) and in their place will be numerical grades (9 to 1), with 9 being at the top of the scale and 1 at the bottom.  In their response to the GCSE consultation Ofqual said:

"In response to feedback to our consultation, we have moved from the eight grades we proposed to nine grades. In part this was to avoid the risk of people assuming that eight new grades would map onto the current eight grades. We also want to avoid the risk of reducing the opportunity for less able students to demonstrate the progress they have made and have their achievements recognised." pg 6

So Ofqual were not giving many details about the equivalence of 'old' and 'new' gradings.  However, the BBC report suggests the following potential equivalence:

"Ms Marshall, from King's College London, has told the BBC she understands that for English at least, there will only be one or two grades below the equivalent of a C.
"It's my understanding that there will be more or less three levels for A grades, two levels for a B and two for a C," she said."

Which of course, leaves two levels for grades lower than a (current) C, rather than the current four.

I wondered how many students this would affect?

Each year, once the examining season is done and dusted, and results day has arrived JCQ publishes details of the results for that session.

The following are the percentage of students in English and Maths that achieved each grade.

English (731153 students sat the exam):
A* 3.3%   A 10.9%   B 20.3%   C 29.1%   D 21.5%   E 9.2%  F 3.8%   G 1.2%  U  0.7%
(36.4% of students achieving D - U)

Maths (760170 students sat the exam):
A* 4.9%   A 9.4%   B 16.2%   C 27.1%   D 18.1%   E 10.0%  F 6.9%   G 4.7%  U  2.7%
(35.5% of students achieving D - U)

From these figures, we can see that there are far fewer students at the bottom end of the scale than at the top end.  The grading system currently provides very finely differentiated marks for E - U grades, and much less differentiation at A* - C).

I can therefore see the strong justification for providing a much smaller grade range below the nominal 'good' grade.

Of course, this doesn't address the fact that the 'new' GCSEs are likely to be harder than the old ones, so perhaps students getting a C currently, wouldn't do so in the future.

.....................................................................................................................................................
Out of interest, the figures for the various sciences are:

Biology (174428 students sat the exam)
A* 14.4%   A 26%   B 28.3%   C 21.1%   D 7.7%   E 1.7%  F 0.5%   G 0.3%  U  0.1%
(10.3% of students achieving D - U)

Chemistry (166091 students sat the exam)
A* 16.6%   A 25.6%   B 26.9%   C 20.9%   D 7.7%   E 1.7%  F 0.4%   G 0.1%  U  0.1%
(10% of students achieving D - U) 

Physics  (160735 students sat the exam)
A* 16.0%   A 25.5%   B 27.8%   C 21.5%   D 7.4%   E 1.3%  F 0.3%   G 0.1%  U  0.1%
(9.2% of students achieving D - U) 

Science (451433 students sat the exam)
A* 1.4%   A 6.7%   B 16.2%   C 28.8%   D 24.6%   E 12.5%  F 6.0%   G 2.5%  U  1.3%
(46.9% of students achieving D - U)

Additional Science (283391 students sat the exam)
A* 2.6%   A 9.2%   B 20.0%   C 32.3%   D 20.6%   E 8.9%  F 4.0%   G 1.6%  U  0.8%
(35.9% of students achieving D - U)

Examiner Woes part 1

At this time of year, I am mostly to be found marking online scripts.

Examining is an important job, and one that I really enjoy doing - especially writing question papers.

However, at this point in the examining season, 2 weeks into electronic marking, I start to get a bit stir crazy.  So here are a few comments which, next year, you might like to pass on to your students.

1. Don't write anywhere except on the lines. If you need to write more, get additional sheets and use them.  It may be slightly different for different online marking software, but for the one I use it's a real pain to try and find the answer.  We can't flip over the page, or easily check at the bottom of page, or follow arrows and stars. Use extra paper.

2.  Get a decent pen.  The scripts are scanned, and pale inks just don't show up well.

3.  Data is plural.  That means that 'Do the data show....' is actually gramatically correct.  Your examiner  does not appreciate being told that they are wrong, or having the script corrected.  A smiley face doesn NOT make it better.

4.  If asked for 3 conclusions writing 'X does have an effect....', 'X doesn't have an effect...', and 'X could have an effect....' will not get you any marks.  Make up your mind and choose one.

5.  If you're going to write 'I can't believe you asked this' then make sure you get the answer right.