Seven subject associations - including those for English, geography, science and history - warn that the use of non-specialist teachers has become “endemic” and must be addressed by the party that forms the next government.
They said: “The impact of an educational system will always be determined by the quality of its teachers and young people deserve to be taught by teachers who are experts in their subjects.
”However, we are concerned such positive experiences are becoming more limited, especially for young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Students ‘deserve’ expert subject teachers
The signatories also noted how often politicians and other public figures credit a teacher for inspiring a love of a subject and setting them on a linked career path to underline why this is so important.
They said: ”We regularly hear our political leaders, and other public figures, credit ‘their’ teacher - whose enthusiasm and expertise helped them to set out on their own path.
“If all young people are to successfully navigate their own journeys into further study, the workplace and later life they deserve to be taught by similarly expert subject teachers too.”
To tackle this issue, the associations said the next government must do more to “strengthen the recruitment of, and ongoing support for, expert subject teachers”.
They said this could be done by “build[ing] stronger links between relevant degree courses and teacher training programmes”, reviewing approaches to training bursaries, and “provid[ing] a quantifiable career-long CPD entitlement” to strengthen teachers’ subject expertise.
Concern over the supply of specialist subject teachers has grown in recent years, with the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers recently claiming that a sufficient supply of specialist science teachers for GCSE students is not “realistic” in the “near future”.
