While we wait for the Schools White Paper and the report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, other bodies have been busy, reporting specifically on the state of science education in (predominantly) English schools. Over the last few months, both the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Institute of Physics (IOP) have produced significant reports looking at the, not entirely happy, state of the teaching profession. The annual report from the Royal Society of Chemistry, brought together responses from nearly 2000 science teachers in their Science Teaching Survey. The Institute of Physics report, The Physics teacher shortage and addressing it through the 3R’s: retention, recruitment and retraining (England), focussed on the need for more specialist physicist teachers and ways to counter the loss of so many teachers during the first five years on the job. Their recommendations, although directed at Physics, will apply across the sciences more generally.
The shortage of Physics teachers is of long-standing and is certainly not improving. What this means is that the subject is often taught by non-specialists, certainly up to GCSE. Science teachers are frequently just that: in terms of how a school uses them, they are often seen as interchangeable between disciplines, something that is convenient not least for timetabling purposes. When the RSC refers to science teachers, they are not distinguishing between those with different specialisms. When it comes to teaching Combined Science, a school does not even have to record this as non-specialist teaching. Yet the IOP’s report shows clear evidence that the fewer specialist Physics teachers (naturally, their area of focus) a school has, the lower the progression rate to A Level Physics. Whether this applies to Chemistry and Biology hasn’t been studied in the same way, but with (according to the IOP) around half of science teachers being biology specialists, this may be less of a problem, for that subject at least.
The IOP go on to highlight that science teachers end up with a very heavy teaching load. As one recently qualified teacher with a Physics background, working in a severely disadvantaged area, put it to me:
I have to prepare lessons each week covering all three subjects for each year group whereas other subjects (e.g. computer science) only prepare a single lesson for each year group each week.
This person was not best pleased to have to teach GCSE biology because they felt they themselves were weak in the subject. Furthermore, they pointed out that some of the people they had trained with were ‘scared’ of physics (coming from chemistry or biology backgrounds) and might well be passing that fear on to their students.
As the IOP points out, significantly more early career Physics teachers leave the profession within the first five years of qualification than the overall average rate, and this requirement to prepare so many lessons, many of which will lie outside their area of expertise, will be a key factor. (Salary may be another, as Physics graduates are often much in demand in highly-paid sectors.) The IOP recommend a different approach to the utilisation of teachers, in which early career teachers teach simply within their specialism, while they get to grips with all the other demands a teaching career places on them. Furthermore, in order to make best use of the Physics specialists they do have, they want to see the sciences treated explicitly as three separate sciences, taught by specialists, at KS4 (i.e the two years up to GCSE). Their report has many other (costed) recommendations, demonstrating that if more Physics teachers could be supported to stay in the profession, over ten years the long running deficit of Physics teachers could be wiped out at a very moderate cost.
Another aspect of science teachers’ heavy workload is highlighted in the RSC report, namely the shortage of technicians to assist with practical work, as well as insufficient funding to buy the necessary equipment and consumables to make practical work feasible, alongside the more general shortage of cash across any given school. This under-resourcing of laboratory work means little opportunity to excite young people with hands-on experience. In the most recent Science Education Tracker, published by the Royal Society, the analysis showed:
Reduced frequency of hands–on practical work was accompanied by rising levels of unmet demand for this: 68% of year 10–11 students wanted to do more practical work.
This is a real issue when it comes to inspiring students to consider future careers in STEM, since this same Royal Society report showed how practical work was considered the most motivating aspect of science lessons at school, especially for students in years 7–9 (KS3). Yet the pipeline of talent in the STEM arena is as important as ever when it comes to the Government’s growth agenda and fulfilling the aims of the Industrial Strategy.
The schools that struggle to attract good science teachers, in whatever discipline, and whose finances are likely to be most fragile (not least because their parents are less likely to be able to offer support, financial or otherwise), will inevitably be those in disadvantaged areas. These issues over teacher shortages will exacerbate all the other problems these schools and pupils face, carrying over from their early years. The statistics are depressing, as revealed in the Social Mobility Report from 2024. Their findings show that, whereas 52.4% of non-disadvantaged pupils got a grade 5 or above in both English and Maths (they don’t specifically look at science), only 25.2% of disadvantaged pupils reached the same level.
However, there is a further knock-on effect for schools which are unable to find sufficient specialist science teachers, and that is whether they offer separate science qualifications (i.e. covering all three separate sciences) or Combined Science, when the three subjects are squeezed into a double GCSE qualification. And, for those schools that offer both, who is making the decisions about which qualification a given student is entered for? As mentioned above, schools can get away with referring to a non-specialist teacher as ‘specialist’ in Combined Science. The IOP estimates a figure of somewhere around one third of science lessons in Combined Science are taught by actual specialists, as opposed to the figures the Government suggests of 94% when ‘science’ is regarded as a specialism in itself, without distinction between the disciplines. The consequences for the pipeline are profound: again, using IOP data, students who take Combined Science at GCSE are three times less likely to proceed to Physics A Level. This may be as much about their school as their capabilities or interests.
The Government is committed to opportunity for all, but there is clear evidence that disadvantaged pupils, particularly those in overall disadvantaged schools, continue to suffer within the school system. Teachers, particularly those early in their career and in any of the three sciences, are stretched to breaking point by being expected to teach outside their speciality. This means that students are too often taught by non-specialists, particularly in Physics where the shortfall is greatest. The net outcome is that the STEM pipeline into A Levels and beyond is directly impacted and many pupils lose out; simultaneously teachers burn out.
