The anticipated announcement this week that the Government is to seek to offset the skills shortage in our schools by offering highly qualified maths and physics postgraduates £40,000 salaries if they go straight into teaching is like placing a sticking plaster over a gaping wound, according to one of the UK’s leading teacher recruitment agencies.

Darryl Mydat, managing director of TLTP Education (The London Teaching Pool) says the scheme, whilst interesting, risks demotivating other teachers and placing staff into classrooms who, whilst knowledgeable on their subjects, may not be skilled in handling a class of students. 

The scheme to place the postgraduates in non-selective state schools, which is to start in September, is to be sponsored by major employers, each contributing £75,000 over three years to cover the additional pay and training costs. The £40,000 starting salary for holders of PhDs in maths and physics compares favourably to basic starting salaries of £21,600 to £27,000 for newly qualified teachers in the state sector. The teachers are expected to undertake on-the-job training for a teaching qualification.

“On the surface this sounds like a great solution to what is a difficult problem,” explains Mydat. “However, dig deeper and it seems to throw up more questions than it answers. Experienced teachers will tell you that there is more to managing a class than simply subject knowledge and, if students are aware of that, it risks making the new teacher’s job even harder. In addition to that, it is going to be tough to maintain a harmonious staff room if you have two teachers starting at the same time with one earning almost double the other.”

Mydat also points out that given that extent of teacher shortages in England and Wales, it has to be questioned whether this new initiative will even make a serious inroad in the numbers.

“I doubt very much that the number of postgraduate students eligible for this new scheme comes close to the number of teachers we actually need. If that’s the case, you have to question whether it is a serious policy or just a way of appearing to do something without addressing the underlying problem.”