Thanks for organising this important meeting. Fully support your initiatives and will be glad to attend.
I’m currently a Senor Physics teacher but have taught Senior Maths A, B, C etc.  and Physics for over 30 years.
I strongly feel like so many of my colleagues that we are doing our students a considerable disservice currently. I know of one excellent (one of the best teachers and brightest minds ) Physics teacher who refuses to teach Physics under the present syllabus for similar reasons. We need teachers like him to return to Physics.

I am a Curriculum Coordinator/Physics/Maths teacher at a private secondary school. I happened to hear your interview on 612AM Brisbane radio today and I could not agree with you more about the misfortunate direction that physics education in Queensland has taken in the last decade. In fact after listening intently to your opinions, I spent this morning marking physics ERTs (extended response tasks) and I totally agree with your assessment of such tasks as being difficult, confusing and inaccurate to score while also seriously lacking in mathematical rigour.

At the risk of sounding very jaded I will give you some specifics. After fifteen years of teaching senior physics I had temporarily abandoned the idea in disgust five years ago in the hope that it may turn a corner. As I return to my first love of teaching I find it still involves far too much ‘sandpit science’ (let’s get in and play!!) although I have seen some marginal improvements to the standard I had left. Early in our first term this year I taught a Cosmology/Space unit for Yr12 that required me to teach no mathematics at all and I was actually directed to give the students no actual specific guidance throughout the entire task. I was supposed to sit back and witness students struggling with understanding the mystery of dark energy as explained on a Youtube clip and then watch on while they sought the guidance of Google for higher understanding. Some years ago my cosmology unit involved hands on work with telescopes during night sessions and mathematical processes for measuring stellar distances based on light spectra. Now we don’t even look at a picture of a telescope! This type of laptop research activity has literally replaced weeks of teaching time in the classroom over the two senior years of science. I have a brother at another local state high school who is also dismayed with senior school physics. It would seem that the mystery of dark energy pales into insignificance alongside the mystery of how one can gain approval from panel members for samples of Year 11 and 12 student assessment pieces. Knowing how to jump through the hoops for panel reviews is all so ill defined.

I have some regular contact with a state level QSA official for Physics and when I hear this new direction being explained and justified I can only think of the story of the ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ as some others seem to voice approval. Are there any significant numbers of experienced physics teachers actually looking on with approval at this new “Fizz-iks”? As we lose experienced hands, I am worried that younger teachers will know no better and end up assuming physics is just a ‘research and critique’ subject with the minimal levels of mathematical application present being considered as a reasonable standard. I could say more but I’m sure you have heard much of the same from other disgruntled academics from around our great state.

As was mentioned on the radio, I would welcome attending an evening meeting on this important topic in Brisbane once you have decided on a venue and a time. Thank you for your service to the future of education in Queensland in challenging this worrying issue.