David Perks is Head of Physics at Graveney School in South West London.

What we must do better

The political imperative to use schools to make society look fairer without doing anything to change real social inequality is turning education into an Orwellian nightmare for pupils, teachers and parents.

It’s the end of the world (and I feel fine)

The ease with which crackpot theories about black holes eating the Earth from the inside have found a purchase on our collective psyche tell us we are very uneasy about the use of science to explore nature. Prophesying the end of the world has become respectable even among scientists, who seem to believe this is the way to secure public support for science – or at least ’useful’ science.