We teach the three sciences separately from grade eight, each by a teacher who studied that subject rather than by one science teacher covering all of it.
The two halves of school science fail for different reasons. The calculations fail because of maths, which is why our science teachers talk to our maths teachers about shared students. The written answers fail because of precision: a student who understands a process perfectly can still lose most of the marks by not saying the one word the marking scheme wants.
So we teach both. Practice on the numerical work, and a great deal of attention to how an answer is written, using real marking schemes so a student can see exactly where marks come from.
We do not have a laboratory and we do not pretend to. Practical work belongs at school; what we do is the theory, the calculation and the examination technique.
Six hundred rufiyaa a month per science, two sessions a week.