Teaching Science

Sir, - In reply to Bernadine O'Sullivan's Letter (August 30th) on the declining numbers applying for education courses, it is…

Sir, - In reply to Bernadine O'Sullivan's Letter (August 30th) on the declining numbers applying for education courses, it is not clear from statistics quoted by Roddy O'Sullivan (The Irish Times, August 13th) what the education numbers refer to. Invariably, when numbers doing education degrees are quoted they consider only primary-level teacher education. The students taking concurrent education degree courses for teaching at second level, as at the University of Limerick and St Angela's College, Sligo, are usually ignored. Even education correspondents seem ignorant of their existence!

At UL teachers of physical education with a second teaching subject (one of which is science chemistry) have been produced since 1972; courses to train science teachers, metalwork and woodwork teachers were introduced in 1980. (St Angela's, Sligo, produces teachers of home economics with either biology or catechetics.) All the courses at UL are in high demand and this has risen over the years.

In 1999 the cut-off points for the science education course at UL are 415, down from 435 in 1998 because we have decided to offer 25 per cent more places to meet the national need for science teachers. The points cut-off is still higher than the average for science degrees (excluding pharmacy). The ratio of eligible applicants to places is over 10:1, contradicting the view that there is no demand for science teaching in the country. Initially the science education degree produced teachers of LC biology and agricultural science, and since 1998 graduates of the programme have also been able to teach either chemistry orphysics as well. This year's intake of 50 will be able to opt after one year to teach physics and chemistry (without biology). From 2000 a separate intake into physical science will be offered.

The traditional route into science teaching is via a science degree plus an H.Dip.Ed., offered by five Irish universities. However, numbers opting to teach science are small, perhaps up to a maximum of 100 in any one year, of whom only 10 to 20 at most specialise in physics or chemistry. UL is thus the single largest provider of science teachers, and the largest single provider of chemistry and physics teachers. Not all of them go into teaching, of course, because they are well-qualified and versatile science graduates with many career options, but also because of the shortage of permanent teaching posts at second-level for new teachers. This is a major reason why teaching is not an attractive profession at present. We would have no trouble finding even more good students to do science education at UL if the jobs were available for them at the end of their course. Thus runs contrary to experience in the UK where numbers opting for science teaching are falling.

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I would agree with Bernadine that we need to "ensure that teaching is regarded and rewarded as a worthwhile profession for both male and female". This particularly applies to providing job opportunities for young science teachers, by whichever route they are produced, if we want to redress the imbalance in schools. Our experience at UL would contradict Prof. Fegan's assertion in an earlier letter "that teaching physics and chemistry in secondary schools is no longer seen as an attractive career option". This is true only if one considers only the numbers doing H.Dip.Eds and excludes concurrent teacher education courses. - Yours, etc.,

(Dr) PETER E. CHILDS, Department of Chemical & Environmental Sciences, University of Limerick.