ABSTRACT

Coming to recent changes since the publication of the last (fifth) edition of the book in 2009, there has been a down-turn in the attention to science. Various reasons for this include the ending of national testing in science in England, a move towards cross-curricular topics and a focus on skills with too little regard to content. All of these changes could – and should – have improved the teaching of science, but circumstances (such as the retention of high stakes testing in English and mathematics in England) allowed attention to drift away, as if we had forgotten how important it is for children to be able to collect and use evidence to develop their understanding of the world around them. For that reason we begin this edition with a section titled ‘Compelling reasons for teaching science in primary schools’.