After a break that was longer than we had planned due to bike accidents and ridiculous workloads, we are back and raring to go. Although physics teachers raring to go is the problem we discuss this week* with Friend of the Podcast, Senior Lecturer and physics teacher retention guru, Mark Whalley.
Thomas drops the bombshell that he is taking an extended sabbatical from teaching**. Before he fell off his bike (again) and broke three ribs (again) we had planned to speak to Mark about this and it was a pleasure to finally catch up.
Mark has run projects for the IOP around retention (see the link below to “Keep Teaching”) and we ask him the question: what is in a school’s power to prevent Physics Teachers from leaving the profession?
As a school leader what can you do? Well Mark has a few tips
Robin suggests the radical step of breaking the universal pay agreement for shortage subjects… what do you think? Would a pay scale for shortage subjects work, or be more trouble than it’s worth? Share your thoughts on X (Twitter).
With the management challenges facing schools, this issue is lower on the list of SLT priorities than it should be, but perhaps we can change a few things to raise the issue. Mark’s helped us to suggest a few low cost things that perhaps we CAN do.
*I know – we haven’t lost ANY of our slickness…
** He wants to fall off his bike in more exotic locations.
Links
Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions – on our Facebook Page: https://fb.me/physicstp . You can also message us via our website contact form at the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, Twitter @physicstp, email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember), you could even email us an autio file if you are feeling really keen.
MusicThe music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License
Please enable JavaScript to use the contact form.
Your Name Your Email Email Subject Your Message Are you human? Send a copy to your email address? Send Message