Topic: Whatever Happened to the Ozone Hole?

[Rik]

Rik - I wasn't targeting you or anyone personally. I was merely making an observation of the UK at large. I strongly feel that scientific understanding in the UK is pretty poor.

Fair enough, Sam, it just came across a bit 'strong'. 

[Sandra]

I strongly feel that scientific understanding in the UK is pretty poor.

So are maths and english language according to this article Sam :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1274947/One-teenager-leaving-school-unable-read.html

One in five teenagers leaves school illiterate and innumerate despite two decades of education reform, research shows. More than 100,000 lack the basic skills needed to function in society.

A study found there has been little or no change in the last 20 years in the proportion of youngsters rendered unemployable because they have such a poor grasp of words and numbers.

About 17 per cent of 16 to 19-year-olds are functionally illiterate, according to the study led by Professor Greg Brooks from the University of Sheffield.

[sam]

I put maths into science, you can't do science without a fundamental grasp of mathematics.

Well interesting, but not unexpected. I suspect that no matter how we change education there will always be some fraction. Oh I'd rather read the first hand article though - it says it was from the Times Educational Supplement - shame I don't get that here.  Though an online version is available: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6042996

But key stage 3 national tests showed a “substantial” rise in writing attainment between 1995 and 2007, while GCSE results suggested a plateau throughout the 1990s, with a gentle rise from 1998 to 2005 and a steeper increase to 2009.

interesting.

[Sandra]

Even more interesting is this from the same article.

a small improvement for 15- to 16-year-olds between 1978 and 1982, no significant change between 1982 and 1987 and a “substantial increase” in the maths GCSE pass rate between 1989 and 2005.

This would suggest that the standards are dropping even more than I suspected  

Wasnt it around 1980 that they started cutting back grammar schools and bringing in comprehensive education 

[sam]

substantial increase

and the other comments in both articles. I find them hard to understand, what is a substantial increase?  I just like to see numbers and graphs, then again it could be a very subjective analysis anyway - trying to judge people's reading skills probably over many different methods of monitoring is always going to produce a large margin for error. Essentially what I'm wondering if everything is actually always been about the same and the errors in the measures are large enough to show you that.