---
title: "Science education in England"
chunk: 13/14
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_education_in_England"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:21:10.973540+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Addressing the shortages ====
One challenge that ties in with England's shortage of science teachers is the number of science undergraduates in higher education, which provides the pool for future trainee science teachers, but undergraduate numbers affect the three sciences differently: In 2023–24, 42150 students in England enrolled for physical science degrees in higher education, which was a little under half the number that enrolled for biological science degrees in England, which was 80085. The number for biological sciences does not include students that studied biology as part of the vocational degrees they enrolled for, with medicine, veterinary medicine, psychology, and subjects allied to medicine making up 440430 enrolments in England alone in 2023–24. This dwarfs enrolments for physical sciences, even when engineering and technology enrolments are taken into account, which amounted to 90870 in England in 2023–24. The table below provides figures for all nations of the UK (including England), and enrolment of students from the rest of the world.

The popularity of the biological sciences (as well as the courses they feature heavily in) over the physical sciences (and the courses they feature heavily in) has been the case for more than a decade (certainly before this article was first written, which was in 2017). This has had a direct impact on government policy in England: for example, the UK government offers bursaries of £29000 to graduates wishing to train as physics or chemistry teachers in secondary schools in England, but £26000 for those who wish to become biology teachers. To further encourage chemistry and physics teacher training, the Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Physics offer scholarships of £31000 to trainee chemistry and physics teachers (as alternatives to bursaries), but the eligibility criteria are not identical (even when the difference in subjects are taken into account). The government has also implemented a policy to increase the number of science graduates from UK universities: normally, a student in England wishing to study for a first degree including an honours degree can get a UK-government-backed student loan as long as they do not already possess an honours degree. Exceptions are permitted, but prior to September 2017 (and in the case of postgraduate master's degrees, September 2016), these UK-government-backed loans for those in England that already had honours degrees were only available for them if the courses they were going to study led to professional qualifications such as medicine, dentistry, social care, architecture or teaching. However, the range of subjects for which a student in England already in possession of an honours degree could get a second UK-government-backed student loan to study a second honours degree was expanded to include science subjects (as well as technology, engineering and mathematics), which took effect from 1 September 2017. As before, the student has to meet both England and UK residency requirements. The inclusion of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects ("STEM") to the list appears to have been triggered not just by teacher shortages in those subjects, but also by a general skills shortage (in those subjects) UK-wide. It remains to be seen whether the direct interventions by the UK government will help alleviate the general skills shortages in STEM subjects, as well as the challenges of delivering a science curriculum and education in the long term.