In response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review
We look forward to seeing how the recommendations in this review are taken forward into practice.
Published: 7 November 2025
All young people, regardless of their background or where they live, should have access to high-quality physics education and the opportunities and pathways that it can lead to. The foundations for this need to be grounded in primary science and the recommendation for a more coherent and structured approach to curriculum design, progression and status is encouraging.
In principle, the commitment to providing separate science at GCSE is also a positive step to address disparity in access and availability, but it will compound the ongoing shortage of specialist physics teachers in our schools and runs the risk of widening inequality in provision. A concerted effort to retain, recruit and retrain physics teachers must underpin these curriculum reforms to help mitigate further inequality in physics education and to enhance equitable access to expert physics teaching.
We will continue to develop and deliver our portfolio of programmes to support and encourage new physics teachers into the classroom, to retain the expertise of experienced teachers of physics within the classroom and to upskill the many teachers who are already teaching physics out field.
We are pleased to see that the review accepts the Institute of Physics’ recommendation for the continuation of a funded retraining programme that supports out-of-field teachers to build their subject knowledge. Our delivery of the DfE-funded Subject Knowledge for Physics Teaching programme, in partnership with STEM Learning, has already supported more than 1,300 teachers since April 2022.
We look forward to seeing how the recommendations in this review are taken forward into practice and in the meantime, we will continue to support schools and teachers in their delivery of high-quality physics education, providing manageable and realistic solutions that can be accommodated within a demanding primary and secondary teaching environment.