The recruitment of physics teachers in England and Wales has slumped to an all-time low. With cash incentives failing to lure fresh physics graduates into teaching, the government is looking to attract mature applicants into the profession, as Paula Gould reports.
You are paid while you train, you get a lump sum after one year on the job, and you can apply for fast-track promotion, a free laptop computer and double the normal pay increases. On the face of it, it seems an attractive deal. But as yet more goodies are thrown into the package to recruit would-be science teachers in the UK, physics students seem even less keen to enter the classroom than in previous years.
Recent figures show that just 205 graduates in England and Wales had registered on teacher-training courses by the end of September 2000, compared with 238 in 1999. This drop is part of a dramatic downward trend. In 1993, for example, 568 people registered on graduate teacher-training (PGCE) courses.
The effect of this sustained shortfall is compounded by the number of experienced staff expected to leave the profession over the next decade. A disproportionately high number of physics teachers are aged over 50, and one quarter are expected to retire by 2010. In addition, increasing paperwork, growing class sizes, low morale and the stress from teaching-standards inspectors have all been cited as reasons for quitting the classroom by qualified teachers across the board.
Teaching by example
As specialist physics teachers leave the profession, their places are increasingly likely to be filled by graduates from other sciences. Last year four times as many biology graduates as physics graduates opted to train as science teachers. Physics will therefore be taught more and more by graduates less familiar with the subject.
But good teachers can make all the difference. “My teaching at A-level was very influential in my decision to pursue physics,” says Will Marshall, who recently started a PhD in physics at Oxford University. “I had two teachers, one who was quite good and stuck very much to the syllabus. The other didn’t teach us much of the syllabus but did something that I consider to have been much more crucial; he showed us why you might want to study physics.”
So fewer specialist physics teachers could mean that even fewer pupils will be persuaded to take up physics beyond the age of 16. The shortage in teachers could then be self-perpetuating, as fewer physics graduates will mean a smaller pool of teacher trainees. “I started off wanting to do maths, but didn’t have a very good maths teacher,” says Claire Blay, who trained to teach during her four-year physics degree at Bath University. “The two physics teachers that I had were wonderful. They definitely made me feel that I wanted to go on and inspire others.”
Competitive job market
PGCE students registering on courses in England and Wales at the start of this academic year were offered a £6000 training salary. Those specializing in physics will receive an additional £4000 at the start of their second year in school employment. Evidence suggests that PGCE students welcomed the money, but hopes that the cash would significantly widen recruitment have not been realized. Indeed, many PGCE students and newly qualified science teachers have already become disillusioned on discovering that their £4000 bonus will be taxed.
A degree in physics is highly prized by employers at present, and students know that they can afford to pick and choose. With numerate, technically literate graduates much in demand by high-tech companies and banks, perhaps it is not surprising that many opt for careers in which their efforts are not only recognized, but also rewarded with attractive starting salaries and benefits packages.
“If you are in the graduate market, you need to pay the graduate rate,” says Brenda Jennison, a lecturer in physics education at Cambridge University. Jennison would like to see the training salary doubled, so that PGCE students are paid the equivalent of a graduate starting salary. She also believes that the government should write off trainee teachers’ outstanding student loans. “Young teachers don’t want to start in debt. At the end of a four-year physics course, they could owe up to £20 000,” she says.
However, money is not the only factor turning graduates away from teaching. “Methods like the ‘golden hello’ are, in the end, just token gestures,” says Alex King, a PhD cosmology student at Imperial College London who is not planning a teaching career. “What’s needed is to change the whole image of teaching as an occupation. A bit of extra cash won’t sway people.”
Margaret Sharp, senior researcher at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University, is concerned about the detrimental knock-on effects that the shortage of specialist physics teachers could have in the future. If fewer teenagers choose to take A-level physics and more students opt for combined science degrees, fewer candidates will go on to take up PhDs and post-doctoral research work in physics. Sharp believes that this inevitable reduction in numerate, technically literate graduates could harm the country’s capacity for cutting-edge research and development.
Targeting older applicants
In common with many educators, Sharp would prefer to address the problem in the short term by targeting support and resources towards a broader selection of potential applicants. “We have got to declare a crisis in science teaching as a whole and try to recruit a large number of middle-aged changers or returners with degrees but no teaching experience and put them on fast-track training to get into the classroom,” she says. “In the aftermath of the Second World War, they trained a whole lot of teachers in this way and they proved to be some of the best teachers the system had. It might be worth trying the trick again.”
Efforts to enlist older applicants are already underway with a scheme that allows people over 24 to train while employed as teaching assistants. From September 2000, schools taking on non-qualified graduates have been invited to apply for grants of up to £13 000 to cover their trainees’ salaries. An additional £4000 per candidate is available from the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) to cover the year’s training and final assessment. Applicants who have completed two years of higher education can take advantage of the scheme too, so long as they can find a school willing to fund their salary for the extended two-year training period and can complete a degree at the same time.
On-the-job training programmes may ease the problems older teaching recruits can face in persuading schools to hire them, by allowing individuals to prove their worth in situ. “Too many mature entrants train and then find difficulty in securing teaching posts or even getting shortlisted for interview,” says Catherine Wilson, education manager at the Institute of Physics. “More readily accessible advice is needed for potential mature entrants on how they might set up taster visits to schools, or set up regular school visits over time.”
Phil Scott, senior lecturer in education at Leeds University, shares the view that more effort should be put into attracting mature applicants back into the classroom. Experience has convinced him that there is a limit to student uptake. Leeds is one of five universities that have taken part in a scheme of lunch-time presentations, organized in conjunction with the Association for Science Education, to answer students’ questions about teaching physics. Attendance at the presentations was disappointing, and most of those who came along had already planned to apply for PGCE courses. “Only a small minority of physics students wants to end up as teachers. You could pay them as much as you like. If they don’t want to do it, they don’t want to do it,” says Scott.
“Young graduates don’t see teaching as an attractive lifestyle,” says Jennison. There are always some who will enjoy and thrive from it, but beginners at 21 don’t like the look of the it. It is the widespread image of long hours, lack of respect, after-hours marking, and lessons spent controlling 30 inattentive and boisterous teenagers in a closed classroom environment that is dissuading current physics students from considering teaching as a career.
Taster sessions designed to enthuse graduates often confirm their suspicion that crowd control is as much a part of teaching secondary science as tuition. Older applicants who have sampled the fast lane, may be better suited to handling the responsibility. “I think that there is quite a market for the 30 to 35 year old, who is burned out from the City,” says Jennison. Once the excitement of trading in technology stocks fades and the promise of e-commerce wears thin, physics graduates may then be ready to take on the classroom challenge.
