Young Reporter | Charge the System- Oluwatoni Adesanya, Newstead Wood

People have made claims that GCSEs are often more like memorisation exams than an assessment of understanding, and the assertion that we don’t need half of what we are taught in school. I wanted to unmask the truth behind the British Educational system, especially for Science, one of the most feared subjects on the GCSE curriculum. 

David Giles is a Physics and Chemistry teacher at Newstead Wood School, having read Chemical Engineering at St Catharine’s College in Cambridge University. A few days ago, I sat down with him to peek behind the curtains at the science in academia. 

We started by discussing how effectively the foundation of Physics prepares you for the subject at a degree level. The short answer? Not very well. The issue is that the Physics we’re taught in school is a broad interpretation that suffices for general knowledge but leaves you woefully unprepared to specialise. Speaking on his Fluid Mechanics experience, Mr Giles noted: 

“We never really did any [Physics] for mechanics at all. We talked about air resistance. We talked about drag, water resistance, those kinds of things. But we never looked at it in detail. […] There is that basis there in terms of physics, but if you go on and do an engineering degree as I did, the actual bits of the physics course that you’ll have used directly will be quite narrow.” 

Speaking about college lectures, he says, “You get all the information thrown at you in an hour during a lecture,” he mused, “and then you’ve got to go home and make sense of that and work through the questions.” 

Physics is notorious for its harsh mark schemes- missing out a keyword may result in losing several marks, even if your explanation shows a good understanding of the concept. On dreaded six-mark questions, he noted, “They really test understanding because you’ve got to write a comprehensive answer that touches on lots of areas and follow it through in a logical manner. The main downside of six markers is, I don’t think it’s generous enough at times for the amount the student has to write, while marks are given away for one word in places. I think if the six marks were worth more, that would perhaps be a bit better.” 

On Physics’ relation to Maths, he observed that, “Compared to whether [students] can remember an equation, I think there are other ways of testing knowledge in an exam, like just talking to the person. Then you can tell quite quickly whether they know what they’re talking about. In terms of examinations, maybe they lean a bit too heavily on the Maths- you can derive some equations that are quite nice and simple.” 

He then added that artificial intelligence can be beneficial to studying Physics in the long run. One way he suggests using AI is to ask for a model answer to a six-mark question, then to personally identify the most salient bits of information. 

The last question was about anything he wished was further prioritised in the Physics teaching space. “I would probably say two areas that I would emphasise, one of which is Electricity in the Home. We do quite a bit of that already in terms of [..] wiring plugs, among other things. That’s probably the most practical intersection with everyday life we visit,” he suggested. “The other one I would mention is Space; lots of people find it fascinating and I think they would appreciate understanding the world, even just for their own enjoyment.” 

And the distinction he makes here, I believe, is crucial- not all of Physics must be learned because you’re going to need it in a lab. Physics is a day-to-day science that continues to push the boundaries of what is scientifically possible. It never hurts to stay up-to-date, and if your GCSE Physics will help you do this, so much the better. All in all, a Physics teacher who’s willing to listen to your enquiries will get you as far as anything. Seeing as we had an interesting conversation about the repeatability crisis in scientific research after this interview, I think I have a good one.