With all the media attention on NAMA these times it's understandable that most of us missed this headline from RTE the other day (hat-tip to eagle-eyed Jude for bringing it to my attention).
Research suggests that almost 10% of second level schools have been forced to drop Physics as a subject offered to students.
The findings indicate that the decision is as a direct result of education cutbacks.
Not a happy statistic, but presumably many of these schools had less than ten students in the class, and it just wasn't feasable to maintain this. So why don't more students do physics? It's a very complex issue but the problem is causing concern to authorities throughout the western world. I believe that one very important factor is the picture of physics which students get from the Junior Cert – if we don't get this right then it's going to create a poor impression when they go to choose their leaving cert subjects.
So what would I change in Junior Cert Physics? – stay tuned.
btw – should we read anything into the fact that the accompanying picture in the RTE webpage is chemistry-related, not physics?