Science Teachers

Technorati tags: science education,graduate salaries,higher education

The DfES report on science teaching in secondary schools has had a lot of coverage this week. Here's a link, but beware - it's 288 pages long.

19% of school science teachers are trained in physics and 25% are trained in chemistry. Over a quarter of 11-16 schools do not have any teachers from a physics background, and one in eight have no chemists. By far the commonest subject for science teachers is biology - which has increasing numbers of graduates. There is clearly a mechanism at work here that disfavours budding physicists and chemists.

One very interesting possible explanation for the low numbers of prospective teachers is given right at the end, in Appendix 4.2, page 268. There, the average salaries of various science teachers against the average graduate salaries in each government office region is examined. Except in London, the South East and the Eastern region (all of which are distorted by the London graduate labour market), teachers earn a higher average salary than graduates. But non-teaching biologists earn lower than teaching biologists in almost all regions, rendering teaching a financially attractive option. Chemists and physicists, however, get a higher average salary than biologists, and so in most regions they can earn more by not teaching.

There are other issues around gender (it is no coincidence that biology is also the only science subject with more woman graduates than men), and they all seem to tie together. But one thing seems clear - unless something is done, the teaching of physics and chemistry will continue to be undertaken by teachers with no more than A-level qualifications in the subject.