10-year plan for teachers of Physics

Posted on September 2, 2025 by John Howson

I was delighted to read the Institute of Physics new 10-year plan for the teaching of physics in schools in England The physics teacher shortage and addressing it through the 3Rs: Retention, Recruitment and Retraining (England) As is to be expected from the IoP, this is a thoughtful and well argued report.

Some of the finding in this new report mirror those in the report published in January 2002 by Northumbria University, and funded by the then TTA. The Northumbria study, interestingly called ‘Supply, Recruitment and Retention of Physics Teachers’ was authored by Prof. Hilary Constable, and I was a part of the team that undertook the research underpinning the report.

Many of the conclusions in the IoP report sould apply to the whole teacher supply landscape. It is just that the labour market for teachers of physics, especially in non-selective state schools, is an extreme example of 30 years of failure to provide schools with the staff needed for the National Curriculum.

It is worth recalling that in the 2006 budget speech, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer mentioned 3,000 trainee science teachers needed as a part of the Science and innovation investment framework 2004-2014. So, the problem has been known for decades, the will to solve it has seen less drive behind it. I sincerely hope that the government takes the recommendations of the IoP report on board.

As someone that has studied the leacher labour market for more than 30 years, the idea of exit interviews has always seemed to me to be a missing a part of the picture. The DfE has wave studies with school leaders, teachers, pupils and parents, but not it seems leavers. I would be happy to manage a trial with the MATs and local authority HR department in one authority, to collect data. The Northumbria study did collect some data from early leavers, workload, the desire only to teach physics and a return to studying appear to be some of the common features of the findings. I guess, not much has changed.

If I have a quibble with the IoP report, it would be on the table of salaries in the report. My guess is that financial services salaries are skewed by a ‘London’ effect and the teaching salary doesn’t fully record any incentives received by qualified physics teachers. I would also like to have seen how many of those with QTS are in Sixth Form Colleges and independent schools?

The idea of retraining is a sensible use of resources, as are subject knowledge enhancement courses for those considering becoming a teacher of physics, but lacking a degree specifically in the subject.

Overall, what the report demonstrates is the lack of a comprehensive strategy for the staffing of our schools and, since the demise of the TTA and its successors, no real centre for policy discussions. One wonders what the Chartered College of Teaching is doing in this field? The demise of the APPG for the Teaching Profession, supported by Chris Waterman for many years, left a vacuum for debate about teacher supply, even if Ministers chose not to listen. Hopefully, after this report, the secretary of State will act.

DfE wasting money on ITT

Posted on August 25, 2025 by John Howson

The latest data on applications to postgraduate ITT courses appeared this morning. Such are the wonders of modern technology that data generated on the 18^th of August can be programmed to appear on the bank holiday Monday in order to keep up the sequence of posting the data on the last Monday of the month by the DfE. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK

As is already known, 2025 is going to be best year for recruitment to graduate teacher preparation courses since 2013, especially in many traditional shortage subjects, such as the sciences and mathematics. But it is not ’a bed of roses’ all round.

AUGUST 2025 OFFER
SUBJECT	2024	2025	2025 TARGET	DIFF ON 2024	DIFF TO TARGET
CLASSICS	66	53	60	-13	-7
ENGLISH	2399	2080	1950	-319	130
RE	494	491	780	-3	-289

OTHERS	454	472	2520	18	-2048
DRAMA	298	337	620	39	-283
MUSIC	378	407	565	29	-158
COMPUTING	642	884	895	242	-11
D&T	680	764	965	84	-201
BUS STUDIES	252	324	900	72	-576

PE	1675	1734	725	59	1009
ART & DESIGN	871	1087	680	216	407
HISTORY	963	1100	790	137	310
MATHEMATICS	2597	3004	2300	407	704
MFL	1498	1677	1460	179	217
GEOGRAPHY	942	1093	935	151	158
CHEMISTRY	920	1054	730	134	324
PHYSICS	1285	1677	1410	392	267
BIOLOGY	1415	1600	985	185	615

Three subjects have recorded fewer offers this year than last year. Two, classics and drama, will miss their target. In English it would be touch and go to meet the target by the date of the ITT census in early December from just this source of trainees. However, Teach First and other routes should mean that the target will be comfortably met. But, the applications patterns for 2026 will need careful monitoring.

Five subjects won’t meet their targets this year, even with Teach First. Computing should, although it hasn’t yet done so from the courses included in this dataset.

The remaining subjects have all recorded increased offers this year and, in most cases, are way over target. This raises the question about whether or not the DfE should once again consider recruitment controls in some subjects. After all, although we will need teachers to cover the missing trainees in the group of ‘other’ subjects, will the 1,000 extra PE teachers offered places over the target have the appropriate skill sets to fill those vacancies? They are certainly unlikely to fill the music vacancies, but presumably could be offered business studies teaching.

Hopefully, the DfE will be matching up to date vacancy data with the targets generated from historical data to see what changes might be needed for 2026 entry. After all, there isn’t money to waste in the public exchequer.

There also appears to be over supply in the primary sector

SUBJECT	2024	2025	2025 TARGET	DIFF ON 2024	DIFF TO TARGET
PRIMARY	10610	11405	7650	795	3755

But I wonder whether, as in some secondary subjects, some candidates are recorded holding more than one offer. Even so, this is a sizeable overshoot and may cause issues next September in some parts of the country for trainees seeking teaching posts in primary schools. Especially, if a combination of falling rolls and a reluctance to move jobs in a deteriorating labour market overall sees fewer posts advertised.

I believe that Ministers need to do some hard thinking about balancing supply and demand for teachers and the cost to the public purse.

Sort out physics teacher preparation courses

Posted on August 21, 2025 by John Howson

The next couple of years likely to see the best recruitment levels to physics ITT courses for more than a decade. As a result, there might be a risk that everyone concerned with teacher preparation breathes a huge sigh of relief, and put the problem of the shortage of teachers of physics in the ‘job done’ bin. In my view that would be a big mistake.

Now is the time for someone, perhaps the Institute of Physics, NfER, Nuffield or Gatsby to consider a research project that looks at the pipeline of physics teachers from school to school, and notably from university to teaching. Do different courses produce different numbers of teachers of physics that stay in the profession, and become the leaders of tomorrow or just provide short-term additions to the teaching stock. How important is a middle leadership cadre?

Mapping these outcomes both geographically and as between public and private schools, and within the public sector as between 11-16; 11-18 and post-16 institutions might create an understanding that could then lead to a debate about how every child could access high quality physics teaching on a regular basis up to Level 3.

With the improvement in mathematics in schools over recent years, there should be the possibility of increasing interest in physics, especially amongst girls. The percentage of girls taking physics is still lamentably low. This is despite 30 years of programmes such as WISE. How far has the lack of management of the scare resource that is teachers of physics held back the encouragement of more girls to study the subject?

Teaching has always looked to be a profession where there is basic pay equality. That’s fine when there aren’t shortages, but there have always been incentives and rewards from golden hellos to additional payments for working in challenging schools. What incentives work to keep teachers of physics in the profession. Is it non-pay matters, such as not having to teach ‘all sciences’ or some mathematics that is as important as pay?

If gender is an issue, what about ethnicity: of both teachers and those that study physics at school? Then there is the issue of what percentage of pupils on free school meals have access to high quality physics teaching? Is it different from those small numbers on free school melas in schools in affluent areas, compared with schools where a large percentage of pupils are on free school meals. In the latter schools, attracting a physics teacher means access for some pupils. In the former, even if there is a physics teacher do the pupils on free school meals have access to physics?

And what about pupils with SEND? What is their access to physics teaching like?

Physics could be a template for other subjects to ask the questions about, ‘what can we do to ensure we have the best system for preparing teachers, recruiting them into schools, and ensuring that they stay in the profession.’ The alternative is that we could carry on as before, and rely upon market forces to provide the Nobel Prize winner of the future.

Numbers granted teaching awards

Posted on August 20, 2025 by John Howson

In a previous post I looked at the prohibition from teaching work of the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA). However, that is only a part of the work of the Agency. The other main task is to maintain the register of qualified teachers, and to grant admittance to the register. There are two main routes to registration. Obtaining QTS in England via one of the several routes available, including the assessment only route, or to seek registration for a teaching qualification awarded overseas. Various governments at Westminster have approved QTS for teachers from certain countries with acceptable teaching qualifications.

The numbers admitted via the various routes in recent years is shown in the table.

	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
ITT in England	37,077	32,877	26,911	25,621
Assessment only route	1,576	1,511	1,697	1,670
Wales/Scotland and Northern Ireland	1,907	1,790	1,457	1,392
OTT recognised for QTS	1,684	5,750	5,233	912
All routes	42,244	41,928	35,298	29,595

Source: Teaching Regulation Agency Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25

Those granted QTS, especially through the ITT routes in England, may not enter service in schools where QTS is a requirement. They may choose to work in the private school sector or those post-16 establishments where QTS is not a requirement. They may also move abroad. On the other hand, those granted QTS by the assessment only route and by converting teaching qualifications from outside of England are highly likely to be either working or expecting to work in a school where QTS is required for a teacher to be paid on the Qualified Teacher Scale.

Schools have aways been able to employ unqualified teachers, once called instructors, either where no qualified teacher was available or where the law did not require them to employ qualified teachers, as in some academies and free schools. That latter exemption may be changed by the current parliamentary Bill once it becomes law.

The decline in ITT registrations is partly down to reductions in the primary ITT numbers. These have declined to meet the reduced need for teachers due to the decline in the birthrate, but the fall in registrations also highlights the ITT recruitment crisis of the years immediately post the covid pandemic. Hopefully, the number of registrations will increase over the next few years as targets should once again be met in many secondary subjects.

Where did overseas teacher applying for QTS apply from?

Country	2023/24	2024/25	Difference
Australia	494	486	-8
Canada	174	148	-26
Ghana	6912	1916	-4996
Hong Kong	107	490	383
India	1762	779	-983
Ireland ROI	93	88	-5
Jamaica	281	157	-124
New Zealand	195	177	-18
Nigeria	5189	1519	-3670
South Africa	617	229	-388
Ukraine	217	131	-86
USA	706	706	0
sub total	16747	6826	-9921

All applications	18,310	12413	-5897
% list of all applications	91%	55%

The response to both a change in the rules regarding overseas trained teachers, and the evidence of a teacher shortage in England, produced a spike in applications in 2023/24 to register as qualified teachers in England from two West African countries, Ghana and Nigeria. Following the exit from the EU, numbers from most EU countries are now very low, amounting to less than 300 in 2024/25, of which 74 applications were from teachers trained in Spain.

Of the countries with the largest number of applications in 2023/24, 1,197 teachers from Ghana; 723 from Hong Kong; 550 from India; 1,309 from Nigeria and 235 from the USA resulted in an award.

Of course, granting an award did not mean that a visa would also be granted, but without these teachers many schools would have found staffing their schools even more of an issue that it actually was in September 2024.

2013 posts now available as ebook for £3.70

Posted on August 13, 2025 by John Howson

Is discipline worse in schools?

Posted on August 12, 2025 by John Howson

It was interesting to hear Laura McInerney and Tom Bennett on the ‘Today’ programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning discussing whether or not behaviour was worse in schools these days than in the past. Both are experienced commentators, and Tom led a review in 2017 for the then government, about behaviour in schools. It is also interesting to see the BBC taking an interest in schools. The World at One last Sunday (also BBC Radio 4) devoted the whole of the programme to an analysis of the SEND issue. Interestingly, there was no government spokesperson available on Sunday, so they had to make do with the chair of the Education Select Committee.

The discussion this morning was around whether or not behaviour had worsened in schools, and if so, why? The usual suspects, covid and mobile phones were trotted out in support of discipline being worse in schools, along with families facing multiple challenges, but there were precious few facts.

One way of measuring the state of discipline in schools is by looking at the number of permanent exclusions each year by schools. The largest single reason each year for these exclusions is always ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’. So, this might be seen as a good proxy measure for how schools are faring in relation to discipline in the classrooms. Of course, this measure doesn’t pick up low level disruptive behaviour, but it is reasonable to assume that there is a correlation between the different levels of behaviour in schools.

Looking back over the past 30 years, the level of recorded permanent exclusions was 10,440 in 1998/99. The level fell to 5,040 in 2010/11. In the latest year, 2023/24 there were 10,885 permanent exclusions. On the face of it, discipline is getting worse again, but is only back to levels last seen at the end of the last century.

I would like to suggest to causes not mentioned on the ‘Today’ programme: teacher supply and school funding. Is there a causal relationship between the fact that permanent exclusions were at their lowest when schools were fully staffed, and had experienced a period of several years of significant funding by government. By contract, permanent exclusions seem to rise when there is difficulty staffing schools, and when funding is less than might be expected in a civilised society.

So, is the answer as simple as proper funding and staffing if you want fewer exclusions? The age and experience of the teaching force might also play a part. More experienced teachers, as I can testify from personal experience, are much less likely to face discipline issues then new entrants, especially if they are unqualified.

In the latest statistics on exclusions, 13 of the 25 local authorities with the lowest rates of permanent exclusions were London boroughs. This just adds more evidence to my thesis that if the rest of the country were funded like London, schooling would be in a much better place across the country. Although I was also pleased to see Oxfordshire in 10^th place overall for the lowest rate of permanent exclusions.

Headteacher vacancies: even in August

Posted on August 9, 2025 by John Howson

More than 40 years ago, I first started counting heads. That’s actually headteacher vacancies, not actual heads. With some spare time on my hands, I thought that I would go back to my roots and look at what is the current state of play this August?

Of course, August is a quiet month, and there are currently fewer than 60 headteacher vacancies listed on the DfE website that is the main go-to place these days, just as the TES was in the 1980s.

The DfE vacancy website still contains some of the flaws created when it was established. Anyone trying to use modern methods of’ scraping’ jobs will come across the random duplication outcome that has been a feature of the site ever since its inception. I am not sure whether it was deliberate or a fault in the coding, but it always used to annoy me when I was running TeachVac to see the same job repeated in the listing more than once.

The alternative, pioneered by TeachVac was to ‘scrape’ school websites where schools placed their jobs. However, for obvious reasons, not all schools placed headship vacancies on their website. Presumably not to let staff and parents know of the impending departure of their headteacher.

At least with headteacher posts, there is no problem deciding whether the vacancy is a repeat listing or a re-advertisement. Headteacher posts are unique, and thus easy to track.

Anyway, what did I learn from collecting the first 50 vacancies? Special schools were over-represented, with eight such schools looking for a headteacher this August. As a part of the White Paper on SEND, I hope that the government will consider the staffing and training of staff for the special school sector that has long been a Cinderella, and if not bullied by the bigger primary and secondary sectors, it is certainly still in search of a fairy godmother.

There are only two secondary schools in the list, and one is a 10-14 school, and the other a private school. That doesn’t surprise me, as secondary schools usually sort out headship vacancies well before the start of the school year. If there is an unexpected vacancy, then there is often a deputy head that can ‘act up’ until an appropriate time to advertise the vacancy.

Of the 50 or so primary schools, including one First School, 17 were faith schools: ten Roman Catholic; six Church of England and one other Christian faith. These numbers don’t surprise me in the least; indeed, I would have been surprised if there were fewer Roman Catholic schools in the list. All the years I monitored headteacher vacancies, Roman Catholic schools often featured prominently in any listings.

The relative absence of schools from London and much of the South East is interesting, but I need more data to say anything else than that.

Almost all schools provide a starting salary, either as a point on the scale or as a cash sum. One academy adds 5% to the quoted salary. The indication of a starting salary is an improvement over the time when schools rarely quoted a starting salary for those interested in becoming their headteacher.

Whether I keep us this task will no doubt depend upon how much else I have to do, but it was interesting retracing my footsteps.

Ethnicity issues remain for new teachers

Posted on August 5, 2025 by John Howson

Data published by the DfE for the 2023/24 postgraduate cohort of trainees achieving QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) showed that differences still remain in regard of entry into the teaching profession between different ethnic groups on two counts. Firstly, the percentage trainees achieving QTS, and secondly, the percentage employed in State-Funded schools.

Ethnicity		Postgraduate
		2023/24
		Number of trainees
		Total	Achieved QTS		Did not achieve QTS
		Total	Total	Teaching in State-Funded School	Total
	Asian / Asian British	2,931	2,704	1,868	227
	Black / African / Caribbean / Black British	1,206	1,106	821	100
	Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups	872	814	611	58
	Other Ethnicity	410	380	268	30
	White	16,082	15,048	11,570	1,034

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2023/24 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The outcomes were more favourable for the dominant White group. 94% of this group achieved QTS, compared with 93% for the Black and Mixed Group’s trainees and 93% from the Asian Group.

Teachers from the White group were also more likely to be working in a State-Funded school by the time the data was collected. 77% the White Group that had achieved QTS were teaching in a State-Funded school. This compared with 75% of the Mixed and Multiple ethnic groups; 74% of the black Group and just 69% of the Asian group.

Despite the number of teachers from the Asian group not working in State-Funded schools, this group still accounted for 12% of entrants. The black group accounted for 5% of entrants and Mixed and Other ethnic Groups together made up another 6% of entrants. The White group, of some 11,570 teachers, accounted for 76% of entrants.

Sadly, it isn’t possible to track the whole journey from application to train as a teacher through to working as a teacher with QTS for each ethnic group. It is also not possible to see whether certain routes are more or less favourable to certain ethnic groups. Both those sets of data would help illuminate possible areas of concern within the process of how graduates become a teacher.

The DfE has also included some experimental regional data about outcomes that would also be useful to see by ethnic groups because, historically, the Asian and black groups applicants and trainees have tended to be concentrated in specific urban areas.

The DfE data suggested that fewer trainees achieving QTS were employed in State-Funded schools in the north of England than the south. The region with the highest percentage employed was the East of England, were 82% of those achieving QTS were employed in a State-Funded school.

Another indicator where there are no published data on trainees by ethnic groups are in respect of new graduate and career changers. For the purpose of the employment data for those with QTS, the DfE splits the trainees into two groups; those under 25 that might be assumed to be mostly new graduates and those over 25 that will predominantly be career changers. Those in the over-25 group were less likely to achieve QTS, but there was no difference among those with QTS in terms of the percentage working in State-Funded schools.

Less than 400 teachers of physics entered service in 2023/24

Posted on August 4, 2025 by John Howson

As a result of the latest data from the DfE, it is now possible to start to see the consequences arising from the collapse in ITT recruitment to secondary courses in 2023/24.

It is interesting to compare the turnaround from the improvement in recruitment brought about by the covid epidemic with the poor recruitment figures for just three years later.

Year Achieved QTS	Achieved QTS	Did not achieve QTS	% Did not achieve QTS
2017/18	25490	1304	5
2018/19	26402	1348	5
2019/20	27542	1191	4
2020/21	30706	1606	5
2021/22	29715	2241	7
2022/23	22437	1840	8
2023/24	21210	1550	7

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2023/24 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The reduction in numbers achieving QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) from 30,706 in 2002/21 to 21,210 in 2023/24, a reduction of some 8,500, or more than a quarter in just three years, goes some way to demonstrate the depth of the problems with recruitment schools faced in September 2024 and even more so in January 2025.

Hopefully, these numbers represent the lowest point for secondary trainee numbers over the next few years, after adjusting for the changes in targets that result from falling rolls in schools.

The data on the percentage achieving QTS might suggest that when it is difficult to recruit trainees, more marginal candidates are offered a place by training providers, and, as a result, the percentage not achieving QTS increases.

Because the DfE only records those with QTS teaching in a State-Funded ‘school’ it does not count those employed in a Sixth Form College or other further education college and, does not count any teachers from the cohort with QTS working in the private school sector. This latter omission might account for why only 49% of those trained to teach Classics were teaching in a State-Funded school.

Subject	Postgraduate
	2023/24
	Number of trainees
	Total	Achieved QTS	Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS)	Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS)
Classics	69	67	33	49%
Physical Education	1,485	1,438	965	67%
Primary	9,378	8,712	6,271	72%
Business Studies	227	201	146	73%
Art & Design	401	382	286	75%
Computing	413	374	282	75%
Total	22,760	21,210	15,921	75%
Modern Foreign Languages	1,024	970	739	76%
Other	327	310	237	76%
Drama	246	227	175	77%
Physics	540	485	373	77%
Secondary	13,382	12,498	9,650	77%
Geography	822	771	601	78%
Chemistry	764	691	544	79%
Mathematics	1,900	1,762	1,385	79%
Biology	885	818	652	80%
Music	237	223	179	80%
Design & Technology	576	540	437	81%
English	2,210	2,062	1,661	81%
History	977	919	744	81%
Religious Education	279	258	212	82%

It is interesting to note that the percentage of those trained to teach physics teaching in a State-Funded school was the same as the overall average, at 77%. However, that meant that there were only 373 new physic teacher entrants into State-Funded secondary schools from this cohort. It would be interesting to know the routes these 373 took before taking up their initial posts? How many of these 373 were from the PG Salaried High Potential ITT route? (Better known as Teach First).

The relatively small percentage of physical education trainees recorded as working in State-Funded schools may well be a result of the numbers recruited into training compared with the target.

Where trainees are required to pay a tuition fee for a course, what responsibility does the government and the course provider have to the trainee to ensure that there are not way too many trainees for the number of vacancies likely to arise? If this means that the student debt is less likely to be recovered, is this a waste of public money?

In a future post I will explore some other aspects of this dataset.

NEETS: Why is London so different to the rest of England?

Posted on July 29, 2025 by John Howson

London seems to be a different world to much of the rest of England when it comes to looking at a range of different indicators about education. The latest one where the statistics raise an interesting question is the percentage of 16- and 17-year-olds that are NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training).

With the raising of the suggested ‘learning leaving age’ to eighteen (the official age is still sixteen) it is expected that almost all students in what is Years 12 and 13 should be in some form of certified education or training. The DfE asks local authorities for data each year bout the percentage participating in education or training and produces scorecards on-line. I wonder how many local authority scrutiny committees ever see this data? Participation in education, training and NEET age 16 to 17 by local authority, Academic year 2024/25 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The scorecard for Oxfordshire can be found at Oxfordshire_neet_comparator_scorecard.pdf

Looking through the data for all local authorities for both 2019 and 2025 what struck we was there was a definite London effect. 28 London boroughs had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. For the rest of England there were only 37 other local authorities with higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019.

One explanation is the inclusion of ‘no data’ in the NEETs percentage. As the DfE noted;

‘NEET/not known rates at the end of 2024/start of 2025 ranged from 0.0% City of London to 21.5% in Dudley. Dudley’s rate includes 2.4% NEET and 19.1% activity not known.’

So, either London boroughs are better at collecting the data – quite possible, given their relatively small size and close geographical cohesion, or there is something else going on.

On the other hand, only seven ‘shire counties’ had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. Might the decimation of rural bus services and the effect of a punitive motor tax on those without a no claims bonus be something to do with this change? Could it be that in large counties there are no longer the staff to badger multi-academy trusts (MATs) to provide accurate data about the destination of Year 11 leavers?

I think the DfE data should make clear both the known percentage of NEETs and the percentage of the age group where these is no data available. Perhaps, there might be a scorecard of MATs to identify those that provide high quality data, and those where hard pressed local authorities have to waste time and money chasing the data.

With the job market looking increasingly challenging over the next few years, and fewer incentives for employers to offer jobs with training to school leavers, the percentage of NEETs is an issue that needs more visibility, especially with the rapid growth in EHCPs. Will the significant increase in young people with mental health issues result in more NEETs, and if so, will London be different?

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: teacher supply