Nov 14, 2024 10:05 PM
https://cen.acs.org/education/Europe-run...rs/102/i36
INTRO: Last year, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) wrote to the UK Parliament with a pressing concern. The society’s latest research had found that 30% of the country’s state secondary schools do not have enough chemistry teachers. In addition, the number of students entering chemistry undergraduate courses had been declining year after year.
A vicious circle was developing: fewer chemistry graduates meant fewer chemistry teachers to inspire future generations of scientists. If the government didn’t address the lack of teachers, the RSC argued, young people could be kept from pursuing a career in chemistry.
Teacher shortages are a known problem in the UK, where poor recruitment and retention rates have plagued schools for more than a decade. Increasingly, the teacher drought is spreading to the continent, affecting countries like Sweden and Germany. A recent European Commission report found teacher shortages in almost all countries in the European Union.
Across all countries, finding teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects presents a high hurdle, and chemistry is among the hardest to recruit for.
“Chemistry has always been on the side of struggling,” says Jack Worth, the school workforce lead at England’s National Foundation for Education Research (NFER), which has been tracking teacher recruitment and retention rates in England since 2019. Among the data it collects are figures on teacher recruitment targets set by the UK Department for Education each year. In all the years of NFER tracking, chemistry has never met its target... (MORE - details)
INTRO: Last year, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) wrote to the UK Parliament with a pressing concern. The society’s latest research had found that 30% of the country’s state secondary schools do not have enough chemistry teachers. In addition, the number of students entering chemistry undergraduate courses had been declining year after year.
A vicious circle was developing: fewer chemistry graduates meant fewer chemistry teachers to inspire future generations of scientists. If the government didn’t address the lack of teachers, the RSC argued, young people could be kept from pursuing a career in chemistry.
Teacher shortages are a known problem in the UK, where poor recruitment and retention rates have plagued schools for more than a decade. Increasingly, the teacher drought is spreading to the continent, affecting countries like Sweden and Germany. A recent European Commission report found teacher shortages in almost all countries in the European Union.
Across all countries, finding teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects presents a high hurdle, and chemistry is among the hardest to recruit for.
“Chemistry has always been on the side of struggling,” says Jack Worth, the school workforce lead at England’s National Foundation for Education Research (NFER), which has been tracking teacher recruitment and retention rates in England since 2019. Among the data it collects are figures on teacher recruitment targets set by the UK Department for Education each year. In all the years of NFER tracking, chemistry has never met its target... (MORE - details)