Press release

Embargoed until 00:01 GMT Friday 11 August 2006

Physics declining as student numbers fall and university departments shut

Friday 11 August 2006

Next week's A-level results will be eagerly scrutinised by the science community for any relief from the continuing swing away from physics. In a report published today, Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham show that since 1982 A-level physics entries have declined from 55,728 in 1982 to 28,119 in 2005 (by 49.5 per cent). Only just over 3.8 per cent of 16-year-olds took A-level physics in 2004 compared with about 6 per cent in 1990.

Declining A-level physics entries have impacted on university physics. More than a quarter of universities with significant numbers of physics undergraduates have stopped teaching the subject since 1994, while the number of home students on first-degree physics courses has decreased by more than 28 per cent. The report indicates that 42 UK universities in 2004 had 10 or more home students on full-time first-degree physics courses compared with 57 in 1994. Even in the 26 elite universities with the highest ratings for research the trend in student numbers has been downwards.

The report also shows that fewer graduates in physics than in the other sciences are training to be teachers, and a fifth of those who do opt to train do so to be maths teachers.

Professor Alan Smithers said: "Physics is in the grip of a long-term downward spiral: not enough young people come through to take physics degrees, which means that the pool from which to recruit teachers is not large enough and science teaching is left to biologists to a greater extent than is desirable. As a result, many young people do not get sufficient opportunity to discover if they are good at physics, and they are naturally disinclined to take what they believe is a difficult subject at A-level when there is an ever-greater range of subjects available. Consequently, there is an insufficient platform to support the university studies to a level where there would be enough graduates from which to recruit the teachers."

The numbers of students obtaining A-levels in physics have dropped despite changes to GCSE courses in 1988 that mean more pupils study some physics up to the age of 16. Efforts to persuade more girls to study physics have stalled in recent years. The numbers of A-level entries in physics from girls have fallen at the same rate as those from boys over the past two decades, with the proportion of A-level physics entries from girls averaging at 22.4 per cent of the total.

Dr Pamela Robinson said: "The introduction of combined science GCSE has meant that many more pupils are taking some physics up to the age of 16. It might have been expected that this would have led to substantial increases in A-level entries and a narrowing of the gender gap. In fact, neither has occurred."

The steep decline in A-level entries has been partly offset by an increase in the pass rate from 75.9 per cent in 1990 to 94.2 per cent in 2005. Nevertheless, the number of passes in A-level physics fell by 23.0 per cent between 1990 and 2005. But the number of A-grades actually increased by 27.2 per cent (up from 6,323 in 1990 to 8,042 in 2005). The better grades have enabled universities to accept 96 per cent of the UK-domiciled applicants to physics degree courses against 88.6 per cent in 1994, while maintaining entry requirements.

Girls are disproportionately less likely to undertake physics at university even though they achieve markedly better average grades in the subject at A-level. Between 1994 and 2004, female students constituted just 18.5 per cent of home entrants to physics courses, compared to 40.5 per cent in chemistry and 58.5 per cent in biology. Males and females passing A-level physics tend to choose subjects at university traditionally associated with their sex - males, engineering and technology, maths and physics itself; females veterinary science, medicine and dentistry and biology.

The decline in A-level physics has occurred across all school and college types, but with the sharpest falls in further education colleges and the smallest in independent and grammar schools. These differences are associated with the ease with which 11-16 pupils can identify physics as a subject. A number of grammar and independent schools retain GCSE physics, while 40 per cent of the feeder schools for FE have no teacher who has studied physics to any level at university and the subject becomes lost in general science.

Professor Smithers said: "The government has recognised that there is an imbalance of specialisms among science teachers and has made it a policy priority to find ways of recruiting more with degrees in physics and chemistry. It also proposes that from September 2008 the highest achievers at Key Stage 3 will have an entitlement to take physics and the other sciences as separate sciences. These are important aims but will they be deliverable?"

He added: "At the same time, there are competing pressures to introduce more integrated science GCSEs, for example, under the banner of 'Science for the Twenty-First Century', in which physics, chemistry and biology as such will not be as identifiable.

"These contrasting aims will compete not only for scarce resources, but also for the very definition of school science."

Copies of the report Physics in Schools and Universities: II. Patterns and Policies, Buckingham: Carmichael Press, ISBN 1 901351 85 8, can be downloaded from: www.buckingham.ac.uk/education/research/ceer/publications.html and obtained from the Centre for Education and Employment Research, University of Buckingham, MK18 1EG.

Note to Editors:

The report Physics in Schools and Universities: II. Patterns and Policies was written by Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson of the Centre for Education and Employment Research, University of Buckingham. The research was funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. It is the second in a trio of reports. The first published in November 2005 reported the results of a national survey of the state of physics in schools and colleges. The third will highlight those comprehensive schools that are bucking the trend by having thriving physics departments, and asks whether there are practical lessons to be learned.

For more information about this release, please contact:

Professor Alan Smithers
Centre for Education and Employment Research
University of Buckingham
Tel: +44 (0)1280 820270 (direct line) / +44 (0)7974 765864 (mobile)

Dr Pamela Robinson
Centre for Education and Employment Research
University of Buckingham
Tel: +44 (0)1280 820353 (direct line) / +44 (0)7974 725006 (mobile)