There are nation-specific barriers to great science teaching

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, workloads and lack of time are felt across all nations. However, our survey and interviews reveal some challenges that are nation-specific. This section explores challenges reported in nations other than England as, with 76% of survey responses, challenges reported in England are reflected throughout the report as a whole. In addition, the number of respondents from Northern Ireland was too small to draw confident conclusions, so we do not present findings here.

Scotland

99% of secondary schools report having an expert in each of the sciences, compared to 86% in England and 87% in Wales. However, unlike the other nations, subject-specific teaching qualifications are mandated in Scotland. Scottish schools still report understaffing across the sciences.
Insufficient funding is a particular barrier preventing science departments from providing practical work opportunities. At mainstream state schools, 52% of schools in Scotland (base n=435) mentioned insufficient funding as a barrier to running practicals (this figure is higher than the figure for all mainstream state schools across UK+Ireland – 33%). It is important to note that this is the third highest reason in Scotland after “Lack of time” and “Disruption due to COVID” (both 61%).
Nearly half (49%) of survey respondents said that student behaviour was a key challenge in teaching the science curriculum in S3 (ages 13 to 15) and S4 (ages 14 to 16).

Behaviour within the school seems to have deteriorated over that time, and the support for the staff with regards to dealing with that behaviour isn't always as good as you'd like it to be. So, you sometimes feel like you're not really sure where to go next because you've done everything you can.

Ireland

Although science technician is not a standard role in Irish secondary schools, 72% of teachers reported a lack of technician support as a barrier to practical work.
Teachers said they would like more support on integrating the curriculum into their teaching plans. They often felt they had been left in the dark. As a result, they had requested resources and guidance on understanding the curriculum expectations and incorporating it into their teaching. Nearly half (49%) of teachers in mainstream state schools (teaching the junior cycle) find it quite or very challenging to teach the science curriculum. Three in four teachers in mainstream state schools find the accompanying curriculum documents (for the junior cycle) are not clear about what needs to be taught (base n=118).
Interviewees reported a lack of Irish-medium education resources.

The curriculum at Junior Cert level is very vague; it's very, very vaguely designed. It is a challenge for teaching, because you don't know exactly what you're supposed to be teaching.

Wales

47% of survey respondents didn’t feel ready to teach the new curriculum, introduced during 2022 and 2023 (base n = 146). During the qualitative interviews, teachers said that not having the assessments for the new curriculum was a challenge.
Teachers of science through the Welsh language reported feeling unsupported due to a lack of Welsh-medium education resources.

I think as a school, more support on the new curriculum would be beneficial, even though the Head of Science is on it. I know from chatting with other departments that they're finding it really hard to integrate the new curriculum into what they do and how to make it relevant to the students to keep their engagement.

The exam boards write questions in English and have them badly translated into Welsh; there's no standardisation of terms, or certainly they don't stick to standardisation of terms. There are less resources available in Welsh. For example, Illuminate have just published some revision workbooks for A Level and AS Level, and I had a look at them last week. They look great; they're in English. They're not going to be in Welsh. If they are going to be in Welsh, it's going to take another five years for them to turn up.

What we are doing

We will continue to tailor our regional support to the needs of teachers and technicians within the nations, through our professional development opportunities, events and enrichment activities.

Illustration of teacher pointing up.PNG

Our team of education coordinators are based throughout the UK and Ireland. They help us to ensure our work is relevant to the local curricula and help teachers to access our support. Contact your local coordinator to find out how they can help you.

We offer a selection of our resources in Welsh and Irish, based on feedback from teachers. Examples include Starters for ten and some job profiles on A Future in Chemistry. We will continue to work with teachers to identify ways in which we can support teaching in Welsh and Irish languages.

Take a look at our behaviour management series of articles written by and for teachers.