1.  The Joint Committee is the umbrella group for the three main bodies that represent British Psychology—the British Psychological Society (with over 44,000 members, including academics, students and practitioners), the Experimental Psychology Society (representing over 600 established research scientists), and the Association of Heads of Psychology Departments (representing over staff and students in over 100 Departments in Higher Education Institutions).

  2.  Whilst the Committee welcomes the thoroughness of the report and the strength of some of its key recommendations, we were extremely disappointed to note that whilst reference is made to psychology being a science (section 2.9), that this is the only mention of the discipline within the report. As a result of this narrow definition of science, we believe that the report fails to recognise a number of important points:

—  That psychology is the fastest growing science subject, it not only has a very strong scientific basis in the biological and computational sciences, but share many similarities with other long established quantitative social sciences. Its diversity is one of its core strengths and as such, it has much to contribute to the future development and strengthening of the UK research and science base;

—  The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Joint Council for Qualifications have recently re-classified psychology as a science. From 2008, psychology will be included in the schools science curriculum.

  3.  This being the case, the teaching of psychology in schools should have been considered alongside other science subjects as part of this review. We feel that this is vital given the proportions of students studying psychology at this level, and the importance of the discipline in attracting people into science, especially those who may otherwise have undertaken law or humanities, thus bucking the trend of decline in other science disciplines (physics, chemistry etc). The reluctance to accept psychology as a bone fide scientific discipline has meant that the resources required to support the scientific methods that underpin the discipline are often not supplied or are inadequate. This is the case both within schools and HEIs (British Psychological Society accredited psychology degrees are centred on practical training in the scientific method and statistics; and require an independent third year empirical research project).

  4.  We also wish to highlight the following concerns:

—  In light of the comments outlined above, references within the report that "there is good evidence that students are opting for "easier" A-Levels over the sciences and mathematics" (Abstract); are misleading to the extent that the figures within the report do not include the numbers of students undertaking psychology (and that these should have been included within the numbers for science subjects);

—  In section 2.11, reference is made to the need to portray science subjects in the best positive light, to overcome the perception by students that the topics are boring and irrelevant to modern life. Moreover, in section 2.12, it is stated that evidence was received that poor science teaching affects female students. The increased popularity of psychology does not reflect that this is the case. Rather than there being a decline in the number of students studying science, we believe that the evidence shows that there has simply been a shift in the kinds of science that are being studied. Importantly, in relation to the concern outlined in section 2.12, psychology also attracts a significant number of women into science, again re-addressing the balance in relation to some of the problems faced by some of the other sciences;

—  In section 2.39, reference is made to the Science Council "Careers from Science" project. The British Psychological Society is not only a member organisation of the Science Council but it is also directly involved in this project. Again, the failure of the report to acknowledge psychology as a science in its references to STEM subjects, results in a failure of the report to present an accurate picture of the present state of science in schools;

—  Section 4.5 discusses the importance of appropriately trained science teaches and the number of teachers teaching outside of their own subject area. It is difficult to gain reliable data pertaining to the number of teachers in psychology—and specifically the numbers of teachers that are non-psychologists, or more seriously, non-scientists. This presents various problems for the students and the teachers, particularly in relation to the analysis of statistics, ethical issues and the research project elements of A Level psychology;

—  The important point to note is that whilst it appears that there is not a problem encouraging psychology graduates to undertake teacher training; we have anecdotal evidence that our graduates either experience difficulty getting onto teaching training or in achieving QTS. Few institutions run PGCEs with a psychology specialism, and those that do, request that students provide evidence and undertake training in another subject alongside psychology;

—  Measures therefore need to be taken to ease the route to QTS for psychology graduates. This is particularly important now that psychology is included in the schools science curriculum.