About The Ogden Trust

The Ogden Trust is a family charity that supports the teaching and learning of physics across England. We work with a wide range of schools across the country providing career-long support for all teachers of physics, from undergraduate students who are considering teaching as a career through to highly experienced teachers.

We work with all phases of school education from Early Years Foundation Stage to Key Stage 5 but in this response we focus on secondary teachers due to the particular concerns with physics specialist teaching. The evidence is primarily drawn from the early career support programmes offered by the Trust, as well as evaluation from other professional development programmes.

The current situation regarding teacher recruitment and retention

While teacher retention is of broad concern, science teachers are known to be leaving the profession at a higher rate than other subjects [1]. There are a number of factors affecting this including higher earning power in other professions [2], regular teaching outside of specialism and the additional planning needed, particularly in light of a reduced technician workforce.

Physics teachers have been under-recruited for a number of years leading to a significant shortage. This exacerbates the problems of retention as some schools have one or no physics teachers which means that teachers coming into the profession do not have access to subject specific support within their school.

The Ogden Trust offers a mentoring programme called Teaching Core Physics for first and second year science teachers who need additional support with physics. We often get applications where there are a very low number (or zero) physics specialist teachers in a school:

“Although I am classified as a biology specialist, in reality I only teach Biology to A level and the remaining 85% of my timetable is comprised of physics.” - second year biology specialist

“I was asked (and agreed to) teach Physics A-level when my school recruited me as there are currently no physics specialist teachers at my school. I thought they would be recruiting another physics teacher, but this hasn't happened, so I will be teaching all year 12 and 13 Physics lessons from September. I will be the only (and very inexperienced) physics teacher in the school.” first year biology specialist

The demand for physics teachers means that they usually cluster in well supported schools. These tend to be independent schools, grammar schools and schools in affluent areas. Schools in areas of high deprivation are less likely to have access to physics specialist and so the shortage of physics teachers most strongly affects the most disadvantaged students.

What action should the Department take to address the challenges in teacher recruitment and retention?

Deploy teachers to teach within their specialism, rather than across science, particularly for those in shortage subjects and at the beginning of their career. The additional planning time for teaching out of specialism creates a higher workload as they learn the content as well as planning the teaching. It also decreases enjoyment and self-efficacy in their teaching. These factors combine to increase the risk to leaving teaching.

Increase support for in service teachers to develop a second specialism. The recruitment of new physics teachers is a significant challenge and is unlikely to resolved in a short time period. In the interim, training current teachers to become physics specialist would allow a greater number of students to have access to physics specialist teachers. The Ogden Trust currently runs the Subject Knowledge for Physics Teaching programme (SKPT) which offers six modules covering the core content of Key stage 3 and 4 physics. The module last eight weeks each, covering substantive, disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge of the topics and allowing science teachers to gain skills, confidence and self-efficacy with physics teaching:

“I feel more confident about my subject knowledge as well as organising my sequence of lessons in order to build a good foundation for such an interesting topic.”

“In summary the SKPT waves course has been incredibly useful, not only for my own understanding of the topic but also to help me develop the quality of my explanations and has already shown an impact on the learning of the students I teach. It will also impact the teaching of other members of the science department at my school as I am altering our curriculum and delivering CPD based on the content.”

“I have found this course to be so useful for me in developing my practise. I am looking forward to teaching waves now rather than dreading it!”

- SKPT participant quotes

Recruitment to SKPT requires the teachers to be released for one face-to-face day per module and, despite a £200 bursary available, this has become increasingly difficult to achieve. Supply cover can be difficult to achieve successfully and with higher staff absence rates and concern over student catch up, teachers have become more reluctant to release teachers. The Department should increase funding incentives to schools to release teachers to participant in courses that would upskill them in shortage specialist subjects.

How well does the current teacher training framework work to prepare new teachers and how could it be improved?

Teachers leave the profession at higher rates in the first five years of their career, while high quality professional development in early career is likely in increase their likelihood of staying in teaching [3]. The Early Career Framework means that teachers in their first and second year are allocated a subject-specific mentor within their school. However, this can be challenging where new teachers are teaching multiple subjects, some of which their mentor may not have expertise in, particularly in shortage subjects.

The Teaching Core Physics programme recruits early career teachers directly and is expected to run alongside the established Early Career Framework provision. Participants are put in regional groups and receive six coaching sessions per year from an expert physics teacher, with bespoke support available if needed. The programme takes roughly a third each from chemistry, biology and physics specialists, many of whom may have been allocated an ECF mentor within science but not necessarily for physics.

Feedback from the programme shows that the participants value having a mentor outside their school who they can consult and the importance of having a peer group that they meet with regularly.

“Ogden Trust and IOP communities offer significantly more support than my department. We are a department with no specialists and as the lead for physics from September I do not have a lot of support or enthusiasm for teaching physics in my department. However I have a large community outside of my school who provide support and make me feel confident that I will continue to raise the profile of physics in my school.” - Teaching Core Physics participant

We also see that physics specialists are more likely to be the only specialist in their school and often take on more responsibility early in their career, with many supporting other teachers in the school, leading on curriculum development and becoming head of physics in their first few years. We support these teachers through our Developing Physics Specialism programme which provides individual bespoke mentoring as well as a peer cohort. This mentoring programme gives isolated teachers support and can be instrumental to them staying in teaching:

“The course has really helped to fill the gap of not having any experienced physics teachers to ask and draw on their experiences. The ability to contact your Ogden Trust mentor who is very experienced in the teaching of Physics means you never again have to spend hours searching the internet for answers to often very niche questions.”

“Thank you so much for all the support you've given me over the years, I don't think I'd even still be in teaching without your support, let alone giving holiday time to training. It's been an absolute privilege to experience somebody with the level of passion that you have and has really been a big motivator for me.”

- Developing Physics Specialism participant

External subject specific mentoring can have significant value, particularly when that subject expertise is under-represented in the school. Schools and ECF providers should be encouraged to seek external mentors to provide additional support in shortage subjects such as physics, particularly where early career teachers may be required to teach it out of specialism.

April 2023