Last month, the BBC ran a story[i] about the number of girls choosing to take Physics at A Level – and the headlines make pretty depressing reading.[ii] Here they are:

• Nationally, only 1.9% of girls choose the A Level
• In Independent Co-Education Schools (like Pocklington) that figure climbs to 4.8%
• Even in Independent Girls’ Schools, it is a dismal 7.5%

So, how does Pocklington fare? How does our Physics department stack up against those in the rest of the country? Well, it would be fair to say that things appear to be pretty healthy – as the stats over the last ten years show.[iii]

• On average, a whopping 16.3% of our L6 girls have chosen to study Physics
• Even in what was by far the ‘worst’ year from the last decade, 8.1% still opted for the subject
• The numbers overall are stable, showing neither a rise nor a fall over the period as a whole

One question immediately surfaces – Why?

What is the Secret?

According to the Institute of Physics, who published the BBC story data, schools which are doing well in recruiting girls have several things in common. They've introduced measures like appointing a 'Senior Gender Champion’ and providing 'Gender awareness and Unconscious Bias' training for all staff.

The odd thing is, though, that none of these points applies to Pocklington! What, then, could it be that is leading to our astonishing level of success? Is an inspirational female Physics teacher the perfect role model? No – the full-time teaching staff have all been men. Is the subject matter being changed somehow to make it more girl-friendly? No – we wouldn’t even really know what that means! So what is going on? Perhaps the answer lies in a rather simpler, but far more important consideration…

Physicists are People Too!

The three full-time teachers over this ten-year span have been Mr Binks, Mr Ward, and Mr Hutchings. Is there anything that these men have in common that might be the key to understanding what is going on at Pocklington? Well, how about this for a possible answer: between them, they have held senior positions of Pastoral Care within the Pocklington School family for no less than fifty years!

All three, it turns out, have had long and successful spells as Housemasters – covering both Boarding and Day School, Middle School and Sixth Form. It is cliché, for sure – but they do not so much teach Physics as teach people.

For Mr Binks, this could manifest in terrible jokes, drawn out anecdotes from the ‘old days’, or spontaneous (and highly illegal) cake breaks. For Mr Ward, it could be a tangential discussion about Star Trek (or, at a stretch, Lord of the Rings), a reassuring phone call to a worried parent, or a fiendishly hard treasure hunt where the clues would have Einstein scratching his head. For Mr Hutchings, it is “story time” – sometimes whole lessons with heads resting on desks, listening to who exactly discovered this Law of Nature, when and how, what they called it, why it nearly didn’t work, and how our world might be totally different if just one small detail had been altered. (Mr Hutchings has even written a book packed with science stories, which you can buy on Amazon[iv])

And, of course, all three know that there are more important things in life than Physics. Sometimes, what is needed is a shoulder to cry on, and plenty of students (boys and girls) have felt able to bare their hearts. Sometimes, what is needed is a little perspective, or a break, or – heaven help us – some slightly off-the-specification fun.

Is this, perhaps, why so many more girls are choosing Physics at Pocklington than almost anywhere else? It might not please the statisticians to hear an answer that can’t be put into a spreadsheet – but maybe, just maybe, it is true: our girls might be choosing Physics because in our labs they aren’t just a number studying numbers. At Pocklington our Physicists are people; and they are learning about the world.