Recruiting STEM graduates into teaching

KAREN ANGUS-COLE, LECTURER IN EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF BATH, UK Fulfilling the UK’s science teacher quota remains a pressing issue (DfE, 2019a). Increased science teacher vacancies (DfE, 2019b) and difficulty in recruiting science teachers are ongoing challenges (TES, 2018), and science teachers have also been included on the Shortage Occupation List (Migration Advisory Committee, 2019). Additionally, although 91 per cent of biology teachers have a relevant post-A-level qualification, this falls to 75 and 62 per cent for chemistry and physics teachers, respectively (Migration Advisory Committee, 2019, p. 195). The 2019 Teacher Retention and Recruitment Strategy claims that a high interest in joining the teaching profession exists, but notes that this does not translate into applications (DfE, 2019a). To address this issue, the report sets out three key areas of focus, one of which is to ‘encourage and enable more potential teachers to try teaching’ (p. 32). In line with this, th