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Retraining teachers in physics costs a fraction of paying bigger bursaries

Qurexa Editorial Team10 September 20266 min read 0 0
Retraining teachers in physics costs a fraction of paying bigger bursaries

What happened

On 10 September 2026, the Education Policy Institute published analysis suggesting that retraining existing teachers to teach physics is far cheaper than increasing teacher training bursaries. The numbers are striking. The EPI calculated what each route costs the government to produce one additional year of specialist physics teaching. Retraining an existing teacher works out at about £5,200 per additional year of specialist teaching. Increasing the physics training bursary by £1,000 works out at roughly £41,000 for the same result. Even when you include the costs that fall on schools rather than government, such as paying for cover while a teacher is training and the teacher's own time, the retraining figure only rises to around £8,600. That is still roughly a fifth of the bursary route. The analysis was commissioned by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, a long-standing funder of science and technical education work. The EPI is calling for government to fund a programme that would retrain existing teachers up to A-level standard in physics. The reason the two figures differ so dramatically comes down to who the money reaches. A bursary increase is paid to everyone who takes the course, including all the people who would have trained anyway. Only the extra recruits it attracts count as a gain.

Why this matters

Physics teaching in England has a long-running shortage. Physics graduates have many well-paid options, and teaching competes poorly on salary, which is why bursaries exist in the first place. The consequence lands on pupils. A great deal of secondary physics is taught by teachers whose own specialism is chemistry or biology. Many do it well, and it is not a criticism of them. But research has repeatedly found that pupils taught by subject specialists are more likely to continue with the subject, and the effect is strongest for physics. That feeds into everything downstream: A-level physics entries, engineering degrees, and the supply of the people the country needs for energy, healthcare technology and manufacturing. It is also an equity issue, and a sharp one. Specialist physics teachers are unevenly distributed. Schools serving poorer communities are less likely to have them, which means the pupils with the least access to alternatives are also the least likely to be taught physics by someone who trained in it. If retraining really does cost a fifth as much per year of specialist teaching, that is not a small efficiency. It is the difference between a programme being affordable and not.

What the evidence actually says

The core insight here is about how you count, and it is worth understanding because it applies to a lot of policy. A bursary is paid to every trainee on the course. Most of those people would have trained anyway. So the cost per additional recruit is much higher than the cost per recruit, because you are paying many people to do something they had already decided to do. Economists call this deadweight cost, and it is why headline bursary figures can be so misleading. Retraining works differently. You are paying for a specific person to gain a specific capability, and almost all of that spending produces the thing you wanted. That logic is sound. There are, though, real caveats. Retraining does not create a new teacher. It moves an existing one, usually out of another subject, and often out of chemistry or maths, which have their own pressures. The analysis addresses the cost of physics teaching specifically, not the whole staffing picture. There is also a quality question that costs cannot answer. Existing physics retraining programmes, including the well-established subject knowledge enhancement route, have generally been evaluated positively, but teaching to A-level standard is a higher bar than teaching to GCSE, and the evidence on how well retrained teachers perform at that level is thinner. And £5,200 per year of specialist teaching is a modelled figure, resting on assumptions about how long retrained teachers stay teaching physics. If they drift back to their original subject, the cost per year rises. That assumption is the one to test.

Practical advice

This is a policy story, but there are a few things worth doing with it. If you are a teacher of another science, or of maths, and have ever considered adding physics, subject knowledge enhancement and physics retraining programmes already exist and are usually free to the teacher. The Institute of Physics and the National STEM Learning Centre are the places to start. If a funded programme follows this analysis, being already part-way through will not hurt. If you are a parent choosing a secondary school, you can ask directly how many specialist physics teachers the school has, and who teaches physics in Years 10 and 11. It is a fair question and a revealing one. Schools that answer it confidently usually have a reason to. If your child is considering A-level physics and their school does not offer it, look at local sixth form colleges and consortium arrangements. Many areas have shared teaching agreements that are not well advertised. And if your child enjoys physics but finds the maths hard, that is the most common reason people drop it, and it is fixable. Extra support with the maths at Year 10 and 11 does more to keep pupils in physics than almost anything else.

What to know

The Education Policy Institute, in analysis commissioned by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, found that retraining existing teachers in physics costs the government about £5,200 for each additional year of specialist physics teaching, compared with around £41,000 through raising the physics bursary by £1,000. Including school-side costs such as cover, the retraining figure rises only to about £8,600. The difference comes from deadweight: bursaries are paid to everyone, including those who would have trained anyway. The caveats are that retraining moves teachers from other subjects rather than adding new ones, that teaching to A-level is a higher bar, and that the figures depend on retrained teachers staying in physics. The EPI wants government to fund a retraining programme. Sources: Schools Week, 'Physics: Retraining teachers far cheaper than bursary boost', 10 September 2026, https://schoolsweek.co.uk/retraining-teachers-in-physics-far-cheaper-than-boosting-bursaries/ ; Institute of Physics, teacher training scholarships and support, https://www.iop.org/about/support-grants/iop-teacher-training-scholarships ; GOV.UK, Initial teacher training bursaries funding manual, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-bursary-funding-manual/initial-teacher-training-bursaries-funding-manual-2025-to-2026-academic-year This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a doctor, pharmacist or other qualified healthcare professional.

#physics#teacher recruitment#Education Policy Institute#schools#STEM#teacher training

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