Stories from February 2009
IOP response to Science and Our Economic Future
Institute of Physics
27 February 2009
Dr Beth Taylor, Director of Communications at the Institute of Physics, said, “It's wonderful to have our Prime Minister making a speech so focused on science as the route to recovery and a healthy long-term future for this country.
“As he states, one of the largest problems we face concerns the lack of specialist teachers; it is imperative that we focus on recruiting specialist teachers of the sciences, particularly physics as historically this subject has suffered with the majority of science teachers having no firm grounding in physics. We would like to see the government go further and set a target to ensure that every UK secondary school has at least one specialist physics teacher.
“We appreciate the government's commitment to maintain science spending with investment focusing on pure fundamental science as well as applied science but we need to be more ambitious in the present climate. We would love to see the UK emulate Barack Obama’s science plan for the USA. The US, along with every other G8 country, is going for increased investment in research as a way to address the immediate problems of recession and at the same time create a great basis for new growth when recovery begins. If the UK doesn’t join in, there is a real risk that good scientists will start gravitating to the States or elsewhere, and that companies with a strong R&D element will do the same.”
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