Hi Stu
Just to clarify that we have been teaching to the National Curriculum in Science from Years 7-10 for the past two years. From a science teacher's perspective there are aspects of it I like, particularly in its endeavour to make its content relevant to students. As to the quality in terms of depth of understanding thats taught, well that's another matter. It can often depend upon the teacher and their background (eg a Biology teacher teaching the conceptual aspects of Physics.), number of lessons available and if you look at it all carefully there is a hell of a lot of material to cover! So some areas will be paid less attention than others.
Ideally what we try/should be trying to do is to provide students with the necessary skills (and basic knowledge) so that by the time they leave school they are independant learners who know when, where and how to seek extra help when it's required. Some do, far too many don't.
It's good to hear that science is being taught at your son's primary school. Very few primary trained teachers have a specialised science background in their methodology. Often the school will employ a specialist science teacher to teach across the school's year levels.
Having a national curriculum from P-12, is I believe, a worthy goal. Knowing where your child is nationally wrt the basics is also important. However, it is all too easily used by the media to label schools/students and teacher bash. Don't get me wrong we need to be accountable for what we do in the classroom and should be continually striving to improve our own skill set. But to be honset most of us have had a gutful with the way we are often portrayed in and by the media.
Please keep in mind though that some of my observations are anecdotal.
Wrt numbers of graduates etc I'll have a look into the exact figures once I'm back at work. The year I graduated there were 28 'new' physics teachers entering the system and we were told that there were about 35 retiring.
Paul