(My Dad was a welder)

You are the same year as my brother then.
What changed that year (based on what I remember my brother doing) was a lot of more advanced/detailed stuff was moved from O level to A level not the fundamentals. i.e. The scientific method, theory etc. all stayed the same but some detail got moved

Obviously you and my brother had 5 years of education before that switch-over… so it’s possible those going into 1st year (yr 7 now) THAT YEAR got taught something completely different but I don’t believe that was the case.

You probably took a different path after that, both myself and my brother did all science/math A levels and I went into science and he went into Engineering. I mention that simply because you have (self evidently) retained the critical thinking but haven’t had the interest or felt the need to keep up with physics or why those fundamentals are actually important. (That’s not saying you don’t remember fundamentals but the reason for them has slipped through lack of use)

I think at this point now we’re vociferously agreeing with each other.

Mostly … that is I’m not surprised you don’t think sticking a private publishing company in charge of the curriculum is a great idea.

Where we differ is I strongly believe the material (i.e. take the whole raft of stuff Pearson/EdExcel do from books to approved test questions to the exams) should never be false with an excuse (sic) “some kids are too thick”

If you looked at the Pearson/EdExcel stuff its a factory… churning out stuff, much of which is of low quality to shave a few pennies off the costs and maximise profit.

It’s really not difficult to adjust the actual poorly written and false questions in a perfectly understandable way to anyone who’s mind has not been closed against critical thinking. (Crazy-legs illustrates that difficulty as does the writings of Rana Dajani I linked)

Its’ going to be read by millions, it seems they could be arsed to write it correctly and consistently.
It’s not like every bit of material is so poorly written, if you look you’ll find the same question better written so its not that the kids can’t understand there might be more states of matter and they are learning a simple kinetic model for the 3 they encounter daily.