Latest news with #InstituteofPhysics
South Wales Argus
5 days ago
- Politics
- South Wales Argus
Calls for Welsh teaching incentives to match England's
Eluned Parrott, head of Wales at the Institute of Physics, warned Wales had fewer physics-trained teachers (174) than secondary schools (205) in 2024. She told the Senedd's education committee no one measure is going to be a silver bullet but evidence shows teacher training incentives work. 'That's why we're calling on the Welsh Government to increase our physics teacher trainee bursary from £15,000 to match England's £29,000,' she said. 'We need a bold reset to recruit, retain and retrain the next generation of physics specialists to help secure the future of physics in Welsh schools." Ms Parrott, a former politician, said only seven specialist physics teachers qualified through Wales' initial teacher education (ITE) system from an intake of 10 in 2023/24. She said: 'The intake allocation target was 67, meaning the intake fell 86% short…. The intake allocation target has since been increased to 72. It is unlikely to be reached." Warning of systemic challenges, Ms Parrott expressed concerns about investment in Welsh ITE compared with centres in other parts of the UK. Contrasting the two, she told the committee: 'You could go to study in an ITE centre that has a full-time professional and professorial level of ITE tuition or you could go to somewhere else where they're struggling to recruit part-time tutors to help you.' Ms Parrott, a former Liberal Democrat member of the then-Assembly, suggested setting up a centre of excellence for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She explained: 'It is important to have ITE centres spread out across the country but – rather than spreading that expertise – maybe create something that is robust, academically respected, driving improvements across ITE.' Ms Parrott said: 'I think there's also an equity issue here with the bursaries and what that means because you cannot realistically live on the bursary that you would get in Wales."
South Wales Guardian
5 days ago
- Politics
- South Wales Guardian
Calls for Welsh teaching incentives to match England's
Eluned Parrott, head of Wales at the Institute of Physics, warned Wales had fewer physics-trained teachers (174) than secondary schools (205) in 2024. She told the Senedd's education committee no one measure is going to be a silver bullet but evidence shows teacher training incentives work. 'That's why we're calling on the Welsh Government to increase our physics teacher trainee bursary from £15,000 to match England's £29,000,' she said. 'We need a bold reset to recruit, retain and retrain the next generation of physics specialists to help secure the future of physics in Welsh schools." Ms Parrott, a former politician, said only seven specialist physics teachers qualified through Wales' initial teacher education (ITE) system from an intake of 10 in 2023/24. She said: 'The intake allocation target was 67, meaning the intake fell 86% short…. The intake allocation target has since been increased to 72. It is unlikely to be reached." Warning of systemic challenges, Ms Parrott expressed concerns about investment in Welsh ITE compared with centres in other parts of the UK. Contrasting the two, she told the committee: 'You could go to study in an ITE centre that has a full-time professional and professorial level of ITE tuition or you could go to somewhere else where they're struggling to recruit part-time tutors to help you.' Ms Parrott, a former Liberal Democrat member of the then-Assembly, suggested setting up a centre of excellence for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She explained: 'It is important to have ITE centres spread out across the country but – rather than spreading that expertise – maybe create something that is robust, academically respected, driving improvements across ITE.' Ms Parrott said: 'I think there's also an equity issue here with the bursaries and what that means because you cannot realistically live on the bursary that you would get in Wales."
Business News Wales
04-06-2025
- General
- Business News Wales
New Project Awarded £1.8m to Boost Science in Schools
An education project led by the Institute of Physics (IOP) has been awarded more than £1.8 million through the Curriculum for Wales grant support programme. Details of the funding for 'Boosting Science Education in Wales,' a partnership between the IOP, the Royal Society of Chemistry and Science Made Simple, were announced by Welsh Government. The project will deliver a suite of support activities for teachers and technicians, working from early years through to GCSE level and will cover professional development, specialised coaching and mentoring. It will also produce bilingual science teaching resources and deliver a series of confidence-boosting workshops for primary and secondary school teachers and technicians. The programme will deliver more than 250 activities and events over three years, and work with schools across the length and breadth of Wales. Emma Tamplin, the IOP's Learning and Skills Manager for Wales, said: 'We're delighted to have been awarded this funding, which is aimed at bringing the new curriculum in the sciences to life. Scientific literacy is a key skill for work and for life. Physics alone supports more than 100,000 jobs in Wales, but science also teaches us the critical thinking skills we need to be engaged citizens. 'Our approach puts teachers and technicians at the heart of our work, recognising that inspiring and confident teachers can transform their students' lives. By working with this generation of teachers, we hope that our project will inspire future generations with a love of science, and a curiosity about the world we live in.'
South China Morning Post
16-03-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Metal sheets, ultra-thin feats: are China's 2D metals the future of electronics?
Chinese scientists have found a way to squeeze metals into ultra-thin sheets – no more than a few atoms thick. Advertisement Some experts believe the feat could revolutionise the way electronic devices are made, from low-power transistors to next-generation chips and supersensitive detectors. Drawing inspiration from ancient copper-forging techniques, a team from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Physics in Beijing produced sheets of bismuth, gallium, indium, tin and lead that were in some cases just one atom thick – hundreds of thousands of times thinner than a human hair. In an article published in the journal Nature on Thursday, the researchers said that compared to their bulkier counterparts, their ultra-thin metal sheets – especially one-atom-thick bismuth – showed exceptionally high electrical conductivity, among other unique properties. Javier Sanchez-Yamagishi, a specialist in two-dimensional (2D) materials at the University of California, Irvine, said that while the Chinese team was not the first to produce atomically thin metals, their results stood out because the new method produces 'large-scale, truly 2D metals' compared to previous techniques. Advertisement 'The stability and large sizes of these materials open up many possibilities for integrating them with other materials and for making new electrical or photonic devices,' Sanchez-Yamagishi wrote in a review article in Nature. Scientists have long known that 2D materials can show vastly different properties from their 3D counterparts, even with the same chemical composition. For instance, a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon, known as graphene, is far stronger and more conductive than the graphite in pencil tips.
