Among teaching specialities, the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects face some of the greatest staffing shortfalls. One reason is that not enough people enter the profession. Another problem is that even fewer teachers stay in the subjects. What is driving this? And what are countries doing to address it? This blog takes a look at the issues at play.
How big is the shortfall?
Note: Norway is for grade 9
Source: 2019 TIMSS
In the United States, there were over 30,000 vacancies for physics teachers in 2019 but only some 6,000 physics majors. In England, United Kingdom, entry into initial teacher training is only 17% of the target number for physics and 30% for computing.
One internationally comparable source of school-level data on STEM teacher shortages is the principals’ questionnaire of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The data from this study is shown in the figure here to the right. It shows that, in some middle-income countries, such as Malaysia or Türkiye, more than 80% of secondary schools face a shortage of adequate mathematics and science teachers. On average, close to 30% of schools across participating countries face such a shortage.
How high are the attrition rates?
Turnover rates in STEM are consistently the highest, including compared to other shortage subjects such as special education or English as a second language. In rural areas, STEM teachers rarely stay in a teaching position for more than five years.
The shortage of STEM teachers is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa. Only around 30% of the region’s short-cycle tertiary enrolment is in STEM subjects (25% of female and 34% of male enrolments). According to an estimate produced for the 2023 GEM Report, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where its small number of STEM graduates is insufficient to provide an adequate number of STEM teachers to meet SDG 4 needs by 2030, even if every single STEM graduate could be recruited into teaching.
One contributing factor to the shortfall is that STEM graduates often enjoy many alternatives to teaching. With increasing digitalization the world over, many may be tempted to go straight into ICT-related jobs. The shortfall by 2030 of people who can work in computing and mathematics is estimated to be as high as 6 million workers in the United States and around 1 million in Germany. It does not help that the average pay gap between teaching and non-teaching careers is higher for mathematics and science graduates than for other subjects, and STEM students may further overestimate this gap and the financial disadvantage of becoming teachers.
Various policies have been implemented to encourage the recruitment, training and retention of STEM teachers.
For starters, money talks. Recruitment incentives sometimes include significant bonuses for signing on teachers in shortage subjects. In England, a target 8% gross salary supplement for early-career mathematics and physics teachers made them 23% less likely to leave their teaching post in public education, mirroring similar results in the United States. Retaining an additional teacher via the incentive resulted in a 32% lower cost than training a replacement.
Another approach is to target graduates or professionals who currently have a non-teaching career. In the German states of Berlin and Saxony, those having gone through alternative certification schemes already make up half of all newly recruited teachers, and the same is true of STEM teachers in the US state of Texas.
The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, a non-governmental network of centres of excellence in post-graduate training in Cameroon, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa, established the five-year STEM-focused Teacher Training Program to provide not only professional development but also classroom resources. Both the centres in Ghana and South Africa use blended combinations of in-person and online training to improve teachers’ subject knowledge and teaching skills, especially those serving disadvantaged populations. In Cameroon, the training model includes building the capacity of ‘master trainers’ at teacher training institutions and raising awareness among principals regarding the importance of providing support to mathematics teachers. In Rwanda, VVOB, a non-governmental organization, similarly focuses on training STEM mentors and subject leaders and establishing communities of practice among them.
Enabling teachers already in the system to teach STEM subjects can be an effective way to increase coverage.
One option is to train interdisciplinary STEM teachers already at the initial teacher training stage. However, qualifying teachers across subjects can be challenging. In 2018 in Thailand, under the Teacher Development Coupon scheme for in-service teacher training for 270,000 teachers, only 0.5% of the coupons were for STEM-related courses.
Where there is scarcity, there is inequity.
The shortage of STEM teachers brings heightened challenges of diversity and equitable provision. In the US state of California, for example, three quarters of secondary STEM students are non-white, but only one quarter of secondary STEM classes are taught by a non-white teacher.
And STEM teachers are not distributed equally across schools. STEM teachers are missing from schools that are already disadvantaged, further aggravating inequality. In the United States, asymmetric teacher mobility between schools results in a significant share of mathematics and science teachers shifting from poor to better-off schools, from schools with more minority students to schools with fewer, and from urban to suburban schools.
Shining a light on STEM in particular demonstrates the fact that focusing only on overall attrition rates or teacher shortages may not be sufficient. Specific subjects may have disproportionate shortfalls, requiring attention to the root causes for the gaps and targeted policy responses to address them.