The decay of British education is not a joy to behold. The rapid descent under the farcical 'audit economy' of Labour , with its Stakhanovite targets and 'we've never had it so good' examination results, bodes ill for those who welcome such attentions. Elite scientists are nothing if not Establishment. Having spent their professional careers assuring that they will receive a constant stream of state funding for research, their goal as scientific cheerleaders is to raise taxes for science and technology. Any attentions from the state are welcomed, as the President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees, noted:
"The Royal Society is particularly encouraged by the ambition to step up the recruitment, retraining and retention of chemistry, physics and maths teachers. It also welcomes the Government's aspiration of achieving by 2014 a 44 per cent increase in the number of A-level physics students, an 11 per cent increase in A-level chemistry students and a 21 percent increase in maths A-level students.
"The Government has clearly listened to the science community on the need for radical action in the face of the serious declines we have seen in the up take of maths, physics and chemistry after the age of 16. It must now work together with the science community if these laudable ambitions are to be achieved."
But if we could just have a little bit less of the regulation when you are assessing us:
Lord Rees also said: "The way that the quality of scientific research undertaken by our universities is evaluated, in order to determine how funding is distributed, has been due for a really radical review. The Royal Society welcomes the Government's intention, as stated in today's budget, to move towards, "a simpler and less burdensome system".
Lord Rees welcomes a simpler system of regulation (possibly involving fewer targets!). Yet, he is willing to subscribe to the suspect increases in student numbers within science subjects that some fat civil service plucked out of the air, massaging funding and demography.
Isn't this the government that has presided over a steep decline in science education, that created internal incentives within higher education rendering science far more expensive to teach at degree level, in comparison to equine studies (or other nonsense) and replaced traditional laboratory education with the multiple choice social responsibility of science. And Lord Rees believes they will help...