A career as a physics teacher is hugely fulfilling. By sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject, you’ll show young people how physics is central to everyday life and needn’t be hard to learn.

Your training will focus on how you can make the subject accessible, whether you’re leading practical experiments in electricity or introducing atomic structures. You’ll be introduced to a range of teaching strategies, ensuring confidence in delivering lessons that are exciting and accessible. 

At the end of successfully completing teacher training, you’ll gain qualified teacher status (QTS), which is needed to teach as a qualified teacher in England. Additionally, all university-led courses will offer a postgraduate qualification, usually a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE), and so do most school-led courses - you can check if a course provides a PGCE on UCAS Teacher Training.

Once you’ve qualified, you’ll benefit from a competitive starting salary of at least £22,917, or £28,660 in inner London. You'll also have lots of opportunities for rapid career progression and pay increases.

Enhance your subject knowledge 

Last year nearly 40% of trainees in eligible subjects completed additional subject training to enable them to start teacher training. If you don’t have a physics degree, or need to refresh your knowledge, you could complete a fully funded subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) course before you start your training. During the course, you could get a SKE bursary of up to £2,400 for a shorter course of 8-12 weeks and up to £5,600 for a 28-week course – find out more. 

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Find out more about a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE)

If you have or about to achieve a PhD and interested in teaching physics, you could get a salary and benefits package worth up to £41k with RIS