Science curriculum unfit for purpose

Calls for education shake-up at UK’s biggest chemicals industry trade fair

FRUSTRATION, despair and familiar fault lines across science education were a running theme at ChemUK, the UK’s largest trade fair for the chemicals sector, as it returned to Birmingham’s NEC on 21-22 May.

In a session billed as the “big education debate”, representatives from learned societies, academia and industry made their cases for the changes needed across schools, colleges and universities.

IChemE’s head of young people’s and student engagement Jo Cox, sitting in for CEO Yvonne Baker, expressed exhaustion at “having the same debate for the last 10 years”, and that any further discussion was arguably pointless without meaningful action. Cox complained that “we have lost sight of why we teach science” and that the curriculum “isn’t fit for purpose” and needs urgent reform.