FC and BC Cover art-pp16 - 1.indd - Royal Society of Chemistry

NEWS
Get seen on the
web and win £500
STUDENTS HAVE THE chance of winning
up to £500 by entering the RSC’s webbased
competition, Exemplarchem. If you
are an undergraduate or a postgraduate
in the chemical sciences you can enter
the 2004 competition by submitting a
presentation covering any topic in chemistry,
biochemistry, materials or related subjects.
Authors of the best projects will be
awarded prizes of £250 and the overall
winner £500, plus £1,000 for his or her
university department.
The 2004 prize-winners’ event will take
place on 29 October at the English Heritage
(formerly Scientific Societies) Lecture
Theatre, New Burlington Place, London.
■i
Last year’s winner,
postgraduate
student and RSC
member Tony Dixon
from the University
of Leeds, collected
£500 for his capillary
electrophoresis
website
The closing date for entries is 30
September. Go to www.chemsoc.
org/exemplarchem or contact Sean
McWhinnie, email mcwhinnies@rsc.org,
tel 020 7440 3309
New Organic
Division president
RAY JONES HAS taken over from Richard
Taylor as president of the Organic Division.
Jones will preside over the division until
Ray Jones (on the right) with Richard Taylor
2006. He said that after a period of change
and updating of the division’s operation,
the former president “has left me a strong
division”.
Letters
Argument for a selective system
I am concerned that there is no hope of the
present university system being able to
produce a sufficiency of the real scientists
needed to prevent “the loss of world-class SET
expertise”, to which Dr McWhinnie referred
(RSC News June, page 5). The solution is a
return to the state school system that existed
until theorists and idealists sought to force
all but the privately educated through an
unselective education system.
The government-desired shape of the
school system will never obtain and retain
appropriately qualified and enthusiastic
graduate physics, chemistry and mathematics
teachers “to provide excellent teaching in
schools” if they are condemned to labour in an
unselective comprehensive structure.
Before the second world war, a south Wales
city could provide a route by which those who,
like myself, could not call on their families
to finance them through the system could
nevertheless be assessed as fit to proceed.
From there it was possible – by a selective
examination system – to proceed to at least
a local university with free studentships and
sometimes with supplementary “exhibition” or
similar financing to a first degree (without the
appalling drop-out rate that appears to occur
today even in the “Mickey Mouse” subjects).
As I understand the position, the undoubted
problem of the later-developing child was, in
early post-war years, remedied by the ability
of such to enter a grammar school on the
basis of subsequent performance. If only
comprehensive schools exist, this of course
cannot be provided.
It seems inescapable that uniform teaching
remuneration across the whole school system
will not be effective in making this possible
or successful. Moreover, such appointments
must be made competitive with opportunities
open to such people in other fields. Clearly, the
likely unpopularity of such a situation must be
made acceptable and its funding be given the
necessary priority over some of the other claims
on the public purse.
GV Coles CChem FRSC
Victoria, Australia
Who should fund CPD?
The usual reaction to discussions on the state
of education is that more money should be
given to the teachers. So it was no surprise to
To comment on anything in RSC News, send a
FEEDBACK letter or email to the editor (details on page 16)
read the lead headline in the RSC News August
(“Give funds to teachers, labs and universities”).
However, another document dropped on my
desk recently: the Audit Commission’s report
on Education Funding (July 2004), which
highlighted that nobody quite knew what
funding was going into education and, once it
got there, what was being done with it.
The RSC News article stimulated some
thoughts on continuing professional
development. In the old days, when societies
were nobbut institutes, continuing professional
development used to be “part of the game”.
It was what you did when you had nothing
more professionally productive to do. That was,
mark you, in the days before television and
barbeques.
Much of what today would be labelled
“CPD” took place then in the evening and
at weekends. Those participating (the great
majority of those in the profession) took pride
in their personal development, and paid for the
training from their salaries. Salaries, for those
not old enough to remember, are what used
to be paid to professionals in return for a 24-
hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week commitment.
I was a bit surprised to read, therefore, that
science teachers’ CPD, done right, would cost
an extra £70 million a year. Whose £70 million
is that exactly?
You have highlighted that without increased
investment in education the UK is in danger of
losing its general manufacturing business to the
Far East. The problem with that statement is
that the tense is wrong; general manufacturing
in the UK has already been lost to the Far East.
The response of our tertiary education
sector has been to follow the market, and help
accelerate the trend. I don’t know whether that
is a right or wrong policy; I just know that it
gives me an uncomfortable feeling, and one
that other people pouring my money into an
unfocussed educational system does little to
assuage.
PW Munn CChem MRSC
By email
No deaths
It’s comforting to note there have been no
deaths recorded in the August issue of RSC
News.
Long may it continue!
MR Kuhnel CChem MRSC
By email
6 R S C N E W S | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4
W W W . R S C . O R G