Looking to the Future

8.1 It is widely recognised that physics specialists are under-represented among science teachers in state schools and in the introduction to this report we described a range of measures the government has adopted in seeking to correct the imbalance. There are training bursaries and golden hellos, enhancement, booster and flexible courses, schemes to involve undergraduates in teaching, and re-training for serving teachers. A major STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Programme was launched in October 2006. The Sainsbury (2007) Review of Government’s Science

and Innovation Policies put forward a number of important proposals for broadening

the base of recruitment and improving retention.

8.2 In 2006 HM Treasury on behalf of the government published The Science and

Innovation Framework 2004-2014: Next Steps in which it set the goal of increasing

the proportion of science teachers who had a physics specialism to 25 per cent by 2014. It is difficult to be sure what this means exactly since it is not stated in the form that there are currently X teachers with a physics specialism and we propose raising it to Y by 2014. In part, this reflects the difficulty of counting the physics teachers and science teachers, which tend to merge into one another since science is the national curriculum subject not physics. In our Schools Survey (Survey III) 63 schools out of 303 (20.8 per cent) chose to report all their science teachers as science teachers rather than distinguishing some with individual specialisms.

8.3 The government has accepted as a baseline that 19 per cent of the science teachers were physics specialists in 2005, a figure obtained in a survey in which heads of science were asked to report the specialism of their teachers (NFER, 2006). Our 2007 survey, described in Chapter 6, and using a similar method arrived at a comparable figure. But the government’s main source of information has been Secondary School Curriculum and Staffing Surveys, the most recent of which has just been published (DCSF 2008b). This Survey attempts to count qualifications in relation to periods taught and is not easy to interpret. The government is intending to replace this approach by an annual School Workforce Census, but the difficulties of precisely what to count will remain. What defines a physics specialist teacher? Is it the main teaching subject, which may differ between Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 and A-level, or the subject of qualification in which case what is to be regarded as appropriate? If it is subject of qualification, is this to be: the subject of the degree obtained which raises the question of what counts as physics and physics-related; subject of initial teacher training which may itself be science; or completing an enhancement course when consensus has to be reached on what level of enhancement turns a non-specialist into a specialist?

Definitions and Data

8.4 It may not, therefore, be possible to determine in any solid way whether the proportion of physics specialists among science teachers has risen to 25 per cent by 2014. But we can accept it as a sign of the government’s commitment to increase the number of specialist physics teachers. A more direct approach would be to monitor the rate of progress towards this objective by comparing the inflows and outflows. Obviously, if more are entering than leaving then provision is improving provided that the increase is proportionally greater than any increase in pupil numbers.

We recommend that the provision of physics teachers be carefully monitored by measuring as accurately as possible the inflows and outflows each year.

8.5 Even this simple-seeming calculation is not as straightforward as might be thought. The elements that need to be taken into account are clear. On the one hand, inflows comprise newly-trained teachers, teachers who have been out of service who return, and transfers in from other sectors, for example, from further education. On the other, the outflow is physics teachers leaving the maintained sector. However, putting precise numbers on the elements is much less easy than it should be partly because of the difficulties of definition and partly due to differences in the data from different sources. Is, for example, moving from a part-time to a full-time contract a return to the maintained sector (as it is treated in DCSF statistics), or is moving from a comprehensive school to a city technology college (state funded but classed as independent) leaving the maintained sector?

8.6 But more than that even for agreed definitions the actual numbers are hard to pin down. The TDA, if anyone, should know how many physics teachers are being trained each year. It conducts a Trainee Numbers Census (TDA, 2007) which collects “information on the number and characteristics of trainees who register or who are forecast to register on TDA-funded mainstream initial teacher training courses for the forthcoming academic year.” In line with government policy it has recently begun to disaggregate the science teachers. Trainees on employment-based initial teacher training routes are collected via another system, the EBR database which “is open all year round and does not have timed collections such as the Census.”

8.7 On the strength of its latest Trainee Numbers Census, the TDA on 11 November 2007 issued a buoyant press release reporting that the number of trainees with a physics specialism had risen from 365 in 2006-07 to 477 in 2007-08, with 40 new and expected trainees on employment-based programmes. Chemistry numbers had also leapt. Chart 8.1 presents the data, in comparison with the GTTR accepted applicant figures for the same years. In sharp contrast to the TDA figures, the GTTR returns are little changed. Moreover the TDA and GTTR figures for the 2005 physics trainee intake were similar - TDA, 289 (see Chart 5.2, page 55) and GTTR, 301 (website).

8.8 There are a number of possible reasons for the divergence.

• Physics trainees notoriously apply late and applicants after 1 July deal directly with the provider so the details may not be passed on to the GTTR;

• The TDA figures refer to all mainstream courses, while the GTTR covers only postgraduate courses so it is possible, but not likely, that the growth has occurred outside the ambit of the PGCE;

• It is not clear how enhancement course trainees are counted and it could be that the boost they have given appears in the TDA figures but not the GTTR’s.