Teach17

The Education Policy Institute has looked at one of the biggest staffing problems in schools: the shortage of specialist teachers, particularly in physics and maths. The report asks whether the answer is simply to recruit more new teachers, or whether we should also do more to train teachers who are already working in schools.

1. England still does not have enough specialist physics and maths teachers.
2. Physics is one of the subjects where the shortage is most serious.
3. The problem is particularly noticeable in disadvantaged schools, where pupils are less likely to be taught by someone with a relevant degree.
4. This matters because good subject knowledge can make a real difference to the quality of teaching pupils receive.
5. The government has mainly tried to tackle shortages by offering large bursaries to people training to become teachers.
6. Physics trainees can receive a bursary of £29,000, but recruitment has still fallen short of target in many years.
7. The report looks at another approach: training teachers who are already working in schools to become stronger subject specialists.
8. This could include science teachers who already teach some physics but do not have a physics degree.
9. England has tried this before. Several programmes have helped existing teachers build their physics knowledge.
10. One earlier programme, SASP, was particularly thorough and trained teachers to a level where they could teach physics up to A-level.
11. Current retraining programmes are generally smaller and tend to focus on KS3 and GCSE physics rather than A-level.
12. The report finds that retraining existing teachers could be much cheaper than increasing bursaries for new trainees.
13. Over five years, the estimated government cost is about £5,200 for each extra year of specialist teaching through retraining, compared with around £41,000 through increasing bursaries.
14. Part of the reason is simple: when a bursary goes up, the extra money is paid to everyone training in that subject, including people who would probably have trained anyway.
15. Retrained teachers may also stay in teaching for longer because they are already established in the profession and have passed the early-career years when many teachers leave.
16. There are still some big questions. We do not yet know enough about how effective retrained teachers are in the long term, how many continue teaching physics afterwards, or how easy it would be to run these programmes on a much larger scale.
17. The report is not arguing that we should stop recruiting new physics teachers. Its main message is that we should do both: continue recruiting new specialists while also giving existing teachers a serious route to become physics specialists.

The main takeaway is quite practical: there are already teachers in schools who could become strong physics specialists with the right training, time and support. The report suggests that investing in them could be a cheaper and quicker part of the solution than relying on recruitment alone.

Read the full report: Retrain or Recruit? Comparing Routes to More Specialist Teachers by James Zuccollo, Education Policy Institute, September 2026.