This week, the Education Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank with left leanings, published another report about the value of ensuring teachers don’t leave the profession compared with trying to boost recruitment. Their latest report is called Retain or Recruit? Microsoft Word – EPI_RetrainRecruit_September2026 and follows on from their earlier report on a similar topic, reviewed in my blog post from 2022, ‘Keeping Science Teachers in Schools Keeping science teachers in schools | John Howson Both EPI reports were supported by The Gatsby Foundation, a body that has a long and honourable history of supporting research in this field.
The latest EPI report makes three recommendations:
Fund a specialist-equivalent retraining programme
Close the data gaps on completion, post-programme teaching, and demand
Add retraining alongside bursary policy, not in place of it
Microsoft Word – EPI_RetrainRecruit_September2026 page 53.
I am all in favour of re-training, if there are the teachers with sufficient knowledge, skills and desire to retrain to do so located in the schools that need them. After all, with an open labour market for teachers, using price as a mechanism for attracting teachers to work in schools without teachers capable of delivering physics at an advanced level hasn’t worked.
However, the EPI report does need to be set into the current context of falling pupil numbers that will eventually affect the size of sixth forms. As I demonstrated in an earlier post, Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson small sixth forms often don’t perform well. Is it worth making sure any first tranche of retrained teachers would be in schools with a viable future, and the possibility of a credible ‘A’ Level programme? However, this is a much wider issue than just teaching physics to ‘A’ level that a future government may need to deal with at some stage.
I am all in favour of ensuring we know who teachers what to whom, and indeed what isn’t being taught in some schools because of the lack of a qualified teacher. I wonder whether this information already exists within the School Workforce database? If not, some sampling of schools might be useful. The 1999 study that I participated in showed that ‘Teaching ‘A’ Level physics was an important driver in retention of early career teachers. I guess it might also be for those retrained. We know for ‘A’ Level entries the schools not currently entering any candidates for the subject.
It is also worth recalling the EPI previously visited this issue in 2018, as I noted in my blog post Pay physics teachers more than history teachers? | John Howson when the issue of differential pay was discussed. Mechanisms around recruitment and retention incentives and equal pay for jobs of equal worth can bedevil that debate.
Finally, it is worth considering whether programme such as Teach First have a better rate of retention than other ITT routes, including apprenticeships and salaried schemes.
We all want more teachers of physics, so I hope that decision-makers consider the EPI approach seriously, as they did with pre-ITT course subject enhancement courses.
