Reading has just closed it's physics department and joins a growing list of leading universities including Newcastle to close it's doors to physicists.
What we're seeing here is a failure on the part of the government to entice and retain physics teachers and a clear lack of understanding of us as professionals and people. Physicists are a diverse people and we have so much opportunity out there for better paid jobs that aren't so damn constrained, yet schools continue to want to see these incredibly gifted, intelligent and forward thinking people performing and teaching in outdated ways with little or no financial support in most cases (that was not the case with my old school of course, rich private school that it was).
There are some great teachers out there and they are consistently being let down by a system that doesn't pay nearly enogh against the payoffs that physics graduates can get elsewhere, insists on standards that are frankly patronising and doesn't recognise and reward innovation.
Teaching is a great profession or it should be, and physics is a great subject. But you just have to look at the facts that pupils are just not doing it any more. Where are all the teachers gone? When is the government going to stop making physics teaching look like a second class profession?
