Physics in schools IV: supply and retention of teachers

The government has recognised that physics is in decline as a school subject and is making strenuous attempts through various incentives and initiatives to provide more teachers in the subject. In this report [the authors] have looked in detail at the flows through teacher training, entry into the profession, the distribution of physics teachers across different types of school, and turnover and wastage. The government has adopted a target that a quarter of science teachers by 2014 should have a specialism in physics, but this is difficult to put into practice and monitor.

[The authors] suggest that a more direct approach to ascertaining whether physics teacher provision is improving would be comparison of inflows and outflows. This will require better definitions and more reliable statistics than are available at present. But the early indications from adopting such an approach are that the number of physics specialist teachers was declining in 2005-06. While recognising that schemes like the Physics Enhancement courses and the Science Additional Specialism Programme are having an impact, further measures encompassing supply, retention and deployment are put forward for consideration.

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