Aug 28 2008
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BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Economics ‘dying out’ in schools
“There are three times as many pupils taking psychology A-level as economics and almost twice as many taking A-level media studies. Sport and physical exercise and the expressive arts are now bigger subjects at A-level than economics.”
What’s happening to my favorite subject area in the UK? It appears that economics education and the number of teachers going into economics is on the decline.
Why? It’s not exactly clear, but the simple answer seems to be, “It’s difficult, so students are chosing not to study it”. That’s unfortunate, especially in an age when economics lies at the root of so many of our world’s social political and environmental issues.
About the author: Jason Welker is a teacher at Zurich International School in Switzerland, where he teaches Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Economics. Jason was an international school student in Malaysia before studying economics at Seattle University then earning his Masters in Education. He calls Seattle and Northern Idaho home. In addition to maintaining an economics wiki and this blog for economics student and educators, Jason also gives presentations on using Web 2.0 tools in education at workshops and conferences around the world. His economics wiki won the 2007 "Best Educational Wiki" award from the "EduBlog Awards". Related posts:
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I don’t know how much you already know about the A-level, but it’s currently the biggest government educational issue in Britain at the moment.
The problem is that year on year students are getting better and better scores on their subjects. Now there are two explanations which have been forwarded for this. One is that students are simply getting better, and the other is that the tests are getting easier.
Whatever the explanation may be, the fact is that this qualification is fast becoming discredited, so much so that they have introduced a new top score; the A*.
I can already think of a few economic implications for this development. A lowering of the educational standard would surely affect Britain’s economic competitiveness on the world stage. One way this could happen, for example, is through a decline of students taking economics. Having fewer economics-savvy people would mean that there would be less advice available for businesses, and therefore they could potentially lose out in the world economy.
As the educational standard is lowered, Britain’s economy, which is slowly undergoing a structural change from an industrial to a services based one, could suffer severely from a brain drain, as there are simply too few people educated at a competitive standard.
In short: no brain, no gain.
It’s a shame that economics at A level is on the decline. However there are reasons, one of which I found out looking on UCAS for University courses. Those students who may want to study Economics at University do not necessarily need it to take the course and so many think that they can take other courses, to perhaps keep courses options open incase of a change of mind. In this way Economics would naturally curve down in the amount of people studying it because there is no need to take it and taking other courses would seem beneficial.
There is a lack of teachers in the UK anyway, but you could say that people are to lazy to take it if they dont need to take it for the university they want to join. They would rather take an easy A-level than a hard 1. I think the schools need to put pressure on people to want to study the subject, boosting the demand and more teachers will start to appear
I disagree I do not feel that economics is a very difficult subject. I think that students choose different subjects, because of different reasons such as media influencing what is popular.
I think the reason for teachers missing to teach economics is partially, because of the lack of demand, but also a general shortage of as Jonny said because for public schools teaching might not be an attractive job opportunity.