Science teacher at secondary - should it be a specialist?

This plea is sad and illustrates perfectly why you need well trained, experienced, specialist science staff with the skills of working with inexperienced youngsters in potentially hazardous situations in every school.
Each practical needs risk assessing based on the class and the room layout. You cant learn a one size fits all from a book. Lolabun really needs an experienced mentor in the lab to show her how to do this safely as I did when I started teaching many decades ago.
Unfortunately people like me with the skills and experience to help her are at retirement age and are leaving the profession in droves.
As the OP said lots of science, particularly in the lower years is being taught by non specialists.
People such as myself are seen as too expensive and when we go we are often replaced by inexperienced non specialists
It's turning science slowly into a non practical subject because of the safety concerns. Long term it is discouraging students from seeing the sciences and engineering as interesting hands on subjects.

Physics and maths teachers are in insanely short supply. My DH is a first class physics and maths grad and applied for a teacher job about ten years ago having worked in the city for a bit but felt he needed to pay something back and looked at teacher jobs in under privileged schools where you could learn on the job. He later withdrew his application but they called him pretty much every month for about six years to ask him to reconsider 🙈

I am grateful that if our kids end up doing further maths and physics, he can help them out because I worry about the lack of specialised teachers.

And in private often they get the graduate qualification but no teacher experience.

Have you read the thread. Schools don’t have the resources, capacity or flexibility to ‘train up’ teaching staff. Recruitment is dire and exceptionally difficult. I, for one, am extremely grateful for the overseas colleagues choosing to teach in the UK (although it is a brain drain for other countries) as there is no other way to recruit science teachers.

I was a school governor until early 2022. The school simply couldn't get teachers with chemistry or physics degrees.

You need your own thread, really. Why don't you ask the teachers who have run this before? I'm surprised your class is so large they are run as practical sets usually.
If you think you're being asked to do something unsafe, speak to your department first and then your union rep.

My dd in Y10 has a new physics teacher(degree in engineering) but she was educated overseas and has not done any kind of teaching conversion here as far as I can tell - simply hired straight in to teach top set science. She has a rather ineffective way of teaching (at least ineffective for British kids used to a different style) so it’s not all just “do you know your stuff” but also “are you used to teaching gcse”. I’m sure this teacher will turn out ok but I’d rather she had a few years teaching KS3 first but I appreciate the school is absolutely desperate.

I think I’d like dc to have a teacher with a B at Alevel. For gcse I don’t think you need a degree if you have a strong A level grade.

(Hope this is the correct forum for science teaching).
Our department wants us to conduct a practical with Y9 students involving heating a beaker of water and measuring how long it takes to boil. I have a class of 30 and all the desks are separated in columns to allow 2 pupils to a desk. I can push desks together for groups of 4 but I am concerned about how to end the practical safely with 10 beakers of boiling hot water, glass and tripod. They have no other space to work except their desks so what should they be doing while they stand as the beakers are cooling? Any suggestions would be appreciated thank you

In my biological sciences degree many moons ago one third of my first year was spent purely on chemistry modules which also formed part of the chemistry undergraduate first year course. This was compulsory for our whole department. Chemistry A level was a requirement to be admitted to the course.

Not the same for physics though but the likelihood of a biological sciences graduate having A level physics is quite high.

Yes schools are generally awful places to work

That would be great. But given we don’t even track the success of the bursary programme and just keep chucking money at physics grads who leave, I don’t think the gov has a credible plan to solve the issue.

I have a degree in chemistry and experience working in laboratories, trained to teach secondary science and the school treated me and the other newly qualified teachers so badly... I went back into lab work!

I now train new staff and apprentices. Much happier.

The problem is the systems and bully mentality if more senior staff, plus the time expected to give up outside of work marking and lesson planning.

Want professionals? Treat them right

@SheilaFentiman tbf I think I am confusing cover with having a long term non- specialist. My DC (pre-GCSE) has had practicals cancelled when the teacher was away and they had cover. Looking back it's more likely that they didn't want the cover teacher to have to deal with it (fair enough! 😂)

Why wouldn’t they be?

It will be things like “did x follow the correct order and use the right quantities “

What happens with the practical element of the course? Although it's all exams, IIRC the syllabus at my DC's school includes the teacher "signing off" (or something - the course booklet we got is vague) various practical skills. Are non-science teachers allowed/insured to cover those bits?

Sure, but it's part of the backdrop why fewer people (of any specialism) consider teaching to be an attractive career.

My DD moved back to state and has a subject specialist for bio, chem and physics and she's doing combined, but I've been really shocked by that and would never expect it. I know schools that are currently teaching Y11 science in the sports hall as there's not enough teachers. At GCSE it really shouldn't matter, the material isn't that advanced, there's just a lot of it.

Not on this thread but on plenty of others.

I thought this thread was going to be a complaint about the PE teacher teaching science, but a teacher with a science degree teaching GCSE is absolutely fine.

More important that they are a good teacher and good at conveying the subject material. I'm sure someone with a biology degree has greater subject knowledge of GCSE chemistry or physics than is covered in the course.
It's not like a kid is going to ask a question about the structure of an atom and the teacher will shrug and say they only know cells.

I suspect the criticism of teachers mainly concerns primary teachers.

I can't imagine the furore that would break out in the community if my local high school (in US) hired a non specialist to teach a science subject (or any other subject for that matter).

No one on this specific thread has criticised teachers!

Exactly. There was a thread a couple of months ago with a parent threatening to go into school and hit the teacher! I mean, I'm sure it was just bravado, but still. Although, I have a friend who was actually punched at the end of day pick up by a parent. They broke her glasses.

@Hollyhedge I agree that, in an ideal world, all children should have subject specialists for the 3 individual sciences. My children have had specialists from the age of 11, but they’re at an independent school. In the state sector, I think it probably varies across schools. There are some which have subject specialists, but unfortunately it’s getting harder to recruit STEM teachers. Some children end up being taught STEM subjects by teachers with no STEM experience whatsoever, so the fact that yours have a science specialist is better than some.

Unfortunately this situation will only get worse under the current government who are cutting funding for STEM education

schoolsweek.co.uk/labour-cost-cutting-spree-now-hits-stem/#:~:text=Funding%20to%20help%20science%20teachers,hubs%20have%20already%20been%20axed.

I was doing a stint of supply teaching a few years ago. I am an MFL specialist but was in state schools covering various subjects.
I was offered a job teaching Marhs in a girls’ faith school in west London and a job teaching Physics at a state school in South London. (For my cover work I was using crammer books I bought in WHSmith ‘GCSE A.* …. in a week’)
These excellent state schools could not recruit specialists so were happy to recruit good teachers of other subjects.
I declined both as was offered an MFl job in an indie which only employs subject specialists.

The 6500 teachers was always a distraction/justification/populist soundbite for VAT on education. It was never, ever realistic based on 40 000 teachers leaving the profession each year. They can't even hit the basic recruitment figure, let alone an additional 6500!

To provide some context to this discussion: www.nfer.ac.uk/press-releases/government-spending-review-is-last-chance-to-meet-6-500-new-teacher-target-as-unfilled-teacher-vacancies-hit-record-high/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nutr