Australian Institute of Physics

Physics Decadal Plan

White Paper: Cover page

Title:Secondary Physics Students: How many?

Author:Dan O'Keeffe

Organisation:AIP (Vic Branch) Education Sub-Committee

Contact phone number:(03) 9561 7602

Email address:

Secondary Physics Students: How many?

Prepared by Dan O’Keeffe, Australian Institute of Physics (Vic Branch) Education Sub-Committee

This is the first of three white papers that examine and make recommendations on:

  1. the participation in secondary physics over time and across states,
  2. the qualifications, training and teaching experience of physics teachers as well as their retirement intentions and the impact on supply and demand,
  3. the tertiary destination of secondary physics students by level of performance.

The participation in secondary physics

Measuring participation in a meaningful way is a difficult exercise. Possible methods include:

i)‘Bums on Seats’

A first approximation would be to use the number of students who do the subject. This data is easily accessible from the curriculum authorities in the various states and gives a sense of reality as it measures the actual number of students doing the subject. A graph of such data would be of use to those staffing schools, selling text books or responsible for organising first year university intakes. However it is limited in identifying trends. Variation in the number of births over time restricts the usefulness of the data. Changes over time not only in the birth rate, but also in the number of women of child bearing age will impact on student numbers.

ii)Percentage of Year 12s

A second approximation is to express a subject’s enrolment as a percentage of the Year 12 population. This information is relatively easy to collate as the size of the Year 12 population is usually available from the same source as a subject’s enrolment. This is a commonly used method and it is quite adequate for analysis over a short time span of several years and restricted to one state.

However for analysis over a period of more than ten years, or between states, it can be inaccurate. Those who have worked in schools for a couple of decades will recall significant changes in the size of the Year 12 population. There have been times when the retention rate, that is, the percentage of students staying on to Year 12, has dramatically risen and times when it has dropped.

This variation in the retention rate will impact on the accuracy of this second method, particularly for those subjects that attract a small proportion of the Year 12 population.

Similarly the retention rates for different states vary significantly, making interstate comparisons by this measure unreliable.

iii)Percentage of Age Cohort

A third method that overcomes this problem is to express a subject’s enrolment as a percentage of the age cohort. The size of the age cohort may be initially difficult to determine, but it can be readily obtained from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data. By the age of 17 most young people are still at school, but some have left for employment, apprenticeships or still looking for work. However, a few years earlier the age cohort was all doing the same thing at the one time: the first year of secondary school. This size of this population, which is readily available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, can then be used to determine ‘the percentage of students who enter secondary school who go on to do a particular subject’. This measure is quite an accurate measure of the ‘percentage of the age cohort doing a particular subject’ and so gives a reasonable indication of the intrinsic popularity of a subject, independent of differences in the retention rate and population variation. It is this measure that is used in the graphs below.

Figure 1: Secondary Physics Participation: Separate graphs for each state and territory.

Figure 2: Secondary Physics Participation: All states and territories on the one graph

The graphs indicate that most states have had rises and falls in Physics participation. In fact, looking at the graphs for NSW and Victoria, peaks have occurred a few times in the last thirty plus years. However for the last ten years the various graphs have been either been fairly flat or trending slowly downwards. From figure 2, the graphs seem to be converging to a participation rate of about 11%. While this value is at the low end of values for the last twenty years, on the basis of earlier data for Victoria and NSW it would seem to be better than the participation in the 1970's and 1980's.

Historical investigation into the possible causes of the peaks in the different states might enable the identification of factors that could assisted the development of programs to increase the participation in physics. Such historical investigations would be best undertaken by persons with specific knowledge of the education system in each state.

The author has some knowledge of the situation in Victoria and suggests the following analysis.

The graph for Victoria, as well as some other states, but not all, have a distinctive peak in 1992. Victoria in the years 1985 to 1992 experienced a rapid increase in the Year 7 - Year 12 retention rate. The retention rate increased from 63% to 88%. A large percentage of the age cohort that had previously left school prior to Year 12 was now staying on. While it can be assumed that many of such students would not have chosen to do Physics in Year 12, nevertheless some would have. It is estimated that the increase in the retention rate accounts for about one third of the increase in the Year physics population in that time.

This factor might account for some or all of the increase in other states in the early 1990's. The graphs for Chemistry and Biology for NSW and South Australia show a similar pattern.

The other factor that might contribute to the increase in the physics participation at that time is the introduction of the VCE, the Victorian Certificate of Education. During the early 1980's as the retention rate slowly increased a diverse range of final year courses were developed for students who were not suited to the academic and exam oriented HSC. These went by various names such as STC, T12, Group B subjects, etc. The intention of the introduction of the VCE was to replace all these certificates with one certificate in which the subjects were to be designed with accessible content and the reporting of student performance would separate satisfactory completion from level of achievement to accommodate the diverse expectations of students.

However, at least in the sciences, the content was still academically oriented and the expectations of some students were not realised. The peak rapidly fell away in the following few years.

The peak observed in the physics graph for Victoria was also manifest in the Victorian graphs for Chemistry and Biology (See 'Participation in the VCE Sciences 1972 - 2008, )

The assessment regime for the new physics course introduced in 1992 was particularly demanding. It was radically revised in 1995, which may explain the turnaround in that year.

It should also be noted that in Victoria during the 1960's and in NSW from 1975 to 1985, there was ten years of steady growth followed by a significant drop. In the case of Victoria there is a possible explanation. In 1966 the Victorian physics curriculum adopted the PSSC text, but it was more than a change of curriculum and a change of text book. There was substantial professional development of physics teachers, new physics equipment was supplied to schools across the state, with additional equipment cheaply available from the Education Department's Stores Branch. By the late 1970's the culture had changed with teachers wanting more flexibility and choice in textbook and content, but the participation declined. It is noted that a comment at the time was that the equal provision of resources to both regional and metropolitan schools was reflected for several years in comparable performance by regional and metropolitan students.

The other obvious feature of the graphs for the different states is the consistent difference in participation states between male and female students both over time and across states and territories. It would appear that none of the various programs to increase the participation of girls in physics has had any impact. WA and QLD have slightly higher percentage of girls doing physics compare to the other states, but it is hard to say whether that is statistically significant, and if so, what it could be put down to.

Looking at the data overall, the similarity of the graphs over the last ten years, despite significant differences in curriculum, assessment and as we shall see in the other papers, teacher qualification and training, suggests that other factors common to all states, such as the limited number of tertiary courses that specify physics as a prerequisite, might be worth investigating. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that this is a significant factor for girls when choosing subjects at Years 11 and 12.

Population Projections

From ABS data the number of students entering the school system at Prep last year are known, so estimates of the Year 12 population for the next 12 years can be reasonably made.

There will be little fluctuation in the size of the age cohort passing through the school system over the next 12 years. So, assuming the participation rate levels out at 11%, there will be about 30,000 Year 12 physics students in Australia. If the participation rate could be increased to 15% by the end of the decade plan, there would be about 40,000 students by then. However identifying a strategy, with some chance of success, and then implementing it are not goals that are easy to achieve.

What is possibly more achievable is to increase the participation of girls in physics. If the participation of girls was comparable to that of boys then the Year 12 physics population would exceed 40,000.

The participation of girls is notoriously low in English speaking countries. The Europeans have been relatively successful. The IOP in the UK is active in this area. An AIP initiative is long overdue.

Recommendations:

  • That the AIP maintain a watching brief on secondary participation and include the latest analysis in it annual report.
  • That the AIP ask the state branches to use its local contacts to obtain historical data and provide possible explanations for variations that have occurred over time.
  • That the AIP ask the state branches to determine which, and how many, tertiary courses in their state have physics as a specific prerequisite, and how many courses have physics included in a group from students must have done one or more.
  • That the AIP establish a task force to develop strategies to increase the participation of girls in physics and to seek funds to implement a program.