So the RSC’s petition and Five-Decade Challenge report have made an impact at the highest level. We’ve managed to start the debate about what we assess in exams and what is needed for the UK to remain internationally competitive.

Science minister Lord Drayson

Nearly 5000 people have signed our online petition. There have been comments for and against our stance. One of our RSC members has resigned, to my sadness, but many others have written to thank the RSC for what it has done. We’ve had support from teachers, scientists and the public. We have people picking holes in how we’ve done it.

But no one, absolutely no one, has said that it was wrong to ask the question – to challenge the current perceived wisdom and the status quo. Our members want the RSC to campaign and that’s what we’ve done!

So what do we want next? We, like Lord Drayson, want our young talented scientists to be stretched. We want well provisioned, modern laboratories – with technical support in schools. We want well supported science teachers to nurture and develop the next generation of citizens, some of whom will become scientists of tomorrow but all of whom will use science in their everyday lives.

For this we need a modern curriculum – and we need a better assessment framework that demonstrates abilities in problem solving, critical thinking and the application of mathematics. It’s not a lot to ask. Let’s get all sides – teachers, industry, examiners and other experts together to make it happen.

Maybe Ofqual could take the lead…

I’m very concerned about the disappearance of problem-solving, critical thinking and mathematical manipulation from school science examinations, and am campaigning to raise awareness of, and ultimately reverse, this unacceptable trend.

In June 2008, we launched a competition - The Five Decade Challenge – to test school pupils’ ability to answer chemistry questions from the 1960s to the present day. As it happens, the older questions involve a number of steps for their solution, although the individual steps might be quite simple. The real challenge was to get pupils to think logically. This contrasts with current questions that are often single-step, and have clues to the solution (eg what is the metal in sodium benzoate? – with Na given in the formula).

The results showed a serious deficiency in the problem-solving and mathematical abilities amongst pupils in UK schools. This adds to a growing body of evidence that dedicated teachers are working under a system which encourages teaching to the test and which fails to meaningfully differentiate pupils’ performance.

I have set up an electronic petition on the 10 Downing Street website to demand that the government reverse the decline in standards of school science examinations.

The report and the exam challenge it is based on are contentious issues, and have attracted much praise and criticism. Below I’ve decided to post some of the feedback as comments to this post – both the good and the bad.

Much of the UK media has taken interest – see today’s BBC News Online, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Daily Mail and Times.

But all this is making me feel old – I’m making the transition from ‘young turk’ to ‘boring old fart’ because I remember writing a letter of complaint some 22 years ago about the consequences of getting rid of ‘O’ level and CSE [don’t worry about what these are] and moving to the new modern GCSEs. It’s enough to say that GCSEs examine the whole of the 16-year-old cohort, while the former pair focused on either high ability [‘O’ level] or mid to lower ability [CSE]. And before anyone gets upset by this, I am the proud owner of a CSE for my performance in mathematics – although I can’t remember where my certificate is.

So let’s cut to the chase. What’s this petition all about? Well it’s not about attacking teachers or pupils. Pupils are working hard and learning new skills and knowledge. Teachers are teaching an ever broader range of skills and knowledge often without adequate material resources, in inappropriate teaching rooms and without the necessary technical support. More investment in our schools and to support our teachers and pupils are at the top of list of our demands.

No, what this petition is about is the examination system. A system that has moved from showing what students can’t do to showing what students can do has fallen into a dangerous trap. If you set the achievement bar too low – that is set the level that must be passed to receive a top grade too low then the very able are not stretched. You then have to try and fix the system by adding a new top grade A* beyond A.

But this doesn’t really solve the problem because very able students like the challenge of hard questions: questions that are not structured, that need thought, logic, problem-solving and are mathematically challenging: this is what employers want but as well as and not instead of communication skills and team working. Our challenge is to design an examination system to achieve this: what we have now doesn’t.