Spotlight on Scotland

By Laura Howes2011-01-01T00:00:00

Source: Evenfh/Shutterstock

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence has been announced and the RSC hosted an event at the Scottish Parliament, Laura Howes reports

In November the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) hosted its annual Science and the Parliament event in Edinburgh, to bring together MSPs, civil servants and the scientific community. Over 300 delegates attended and Iain Gray MSP, leader of the Scottish Labour Party, led the event.

In his opening address Gray, who originally trained as a maths and physics teacher, assured the attendees that he believed that science education must be protected. He added 'we need more science in our schools and further and higher education. We need more bursaries and scholarships to support the skills pipeline.'

In a panel question and answer session, several questions focused on education, although education spending is devolved to local councils. All the panel agreed that science teaching in schools needs to be supported, with Liam McArthur MSP saying 'it's a false economy to cut funds for practical teaching.'

It was suggested that secondary STEM teachers could be used in primary schools to help enthuse young children and that to ease the transition, a cross-curricular approach be taken for teaching STEM subjects at secondary schools.

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