About SCORE: Science Community Representing Education
Key players in the science community have become increasingly concerned about a number of long-term trends within science education and have set up a the partnership SCORE to bring collective action to bear on these trends. SCORE partners recognise the importance of taking a strategic approach to strengthening science education, and in particular to addressing the serious problems of the decline in numbers of young people taking A-level physics and chemistry and the unacceptable shortages of specialist teachers in these subjects in our schools and colleges. The partners believe that the key to maximising the impact of their efforts, especially their influence on government, lies in a greater degree of collaboration and in having a sense of common purpose. Through this collective action, the partnership aims to increase its influence over the direction of science education in the years to come, in particular over teacher supply and retention, curriculum development, assessment, delivery of support to teachers and students, and strategies for reaching all young people regardless of age, background, level of ability, gender, ethnic origin and geographical location.
Working in a renewed spirit of cooperation and teamwork, the partners will undertake collaborative projects.
The challenge for the partnership is to work effectively with government and others over the ambitious plans published in the government's Next Steps document in March 2006 for substantial increases in A level entries in physics and chemistry, and in the recruitment and retention of specialist teachers. Meeting these step-change ambitions on a national scale will be impossible without greater collaborative working and a closer integration of policy and practice. Government has confirmed its wish to work with a science community which articulates its views in a coherent fashion.
The founding partners are the Association for Science Education, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Science Council and the Society of Biology. Additional resources will be sought from government and charitable foundations to enable the partners to step up their collaboration.
The individual partners will still speak on behalf of their subjects when appropriate but SCORE will be a powerful voice for science education.
SCORE will engage with the teaching profession and key players in the science and science education fields including, STEMNET, the Science Learning Centres, the research community, the engineering community, science-based industry, the British Science Association and charities.
Working in a renewed spirit of cooperation and teamwork, the partners will undertake collaborative projects, conduct joint studies, develop common evaluation procedures and share best practice. They will develop a programme whose focus will be on activities of a type already shown to have an impact and whose principal emphasis will be on providing support for teachers.