【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[解析]
Questions 11～13 are based on the following passage:
Efforts by the British Government to push more students into the sciences will fail unless A-levels are reformed, according to an education expert. Professor Alan Smithers, of Manchester University's school of education, said: "The present system does not ed ucateenough scientists or engineers or science teachers. Too few young people include sufficient science subjects among their three A levels to continue with it at university. "
Pupils should normally choose five subjects. "More subjects at 16 would broaden minds and widen choices, " he said. England and Wales were the only countries apart from Ghana which required young people to choose as few as three subjects, and most countries had a curriculum based on five to seven.
Prof. Smithers said that the crisis in teacher supply in the late 1980s appeared to have been solved, with more than 30000 teachers a year now being trained, but in reality improvements were marginal. Applications to train as teachers go up as new graduate unemployment rises and go down when it falls. Teaching thus appears not to be a first choice occupation for many graduates—and particularly not for science students.
It was particularly disappointing that math, physics and chemistry trainees tended to have poor degrees. In these subjects more than a third of those taking postgraduate courses had a third class honors degree or lower, compared with about one in 20 of those training to be English or history teachers, he said.
Question 11: What is this passage mainly concerned with?