Good morning. It’s back-to-school week, and the daily ritual (or, perhaps, panic) begins as uniforms are being donned and lunchboxes packed across the UK to start a new year. My sympathies to you teachers setting early morning alarms, and parents dragging children out of bed after six weeks of lie-ins.

Last year, Keir Starmer promised to leave “no stone unturned to give every child the very best start at life”, but how is that going? More than half a million GCSE students in England will start the year with no physics teacher, while many kids from poorer families feel they cannot afford to have their children study geography or languages, new Guardian reporting shows.

These are just a few things that reveal bigger issues about the lack of opportunities for millions of bleary-eyed children getting up for school this week. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Guardian education correspondent Sally Weale about how inequality is embedded into the system, and whether Labour is doing enough to tackle it. First, the headlines.

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2. Israel-Gaza war | A plan circulating in the White House to develop the “Gaza Riviera” as a string of high-tech megacities has been dismissed as an “insane” attempt to provide cover for the large-scale ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory’s population.

3. Politics | Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has been moved to a new senior role in Downing Street as Keir Starmer attempts to get a grip on delivery before what is likely to be a tumultuous autumn for the government.

4. Health | A three-minute brainwave test can detect memory problems linked to Alzheimer’s disease long before people are typically diagnosed, raising hopes that the approach could help identify those most likely to benefit from new drugs for the condition.

5. UK news | Prominent women including cultural figures, politicians and campaigners have signed a letter criticising rightwing attempts to link sexual violence in Britain to asylum seekers. Signatories include the musicians Paloma Faith, Charlotte Church and Anoushka Shankar.

A significant challenge for some schools starts not in the classroom but with recruitment. One-quarter of English state schools have no specialist physics teachers, with maths, biology or chemistry teachers typically being roped in to do the job, according to research by the Institute of Physics. Many of these teachers have not studied physics beyond the age of 18, and may themselves have only studied the subject to GCSE level.

“Recruitment of new teachers, and then retention of teachers you’ve already got, has been very difficult for quite a long time,” said Sally Weale. Take physics: people with science degrees are likely to have a lot of better-paid employment opportunities in the private sector. “Certain school subjects have been particularly badly affected, and physics is a big one. Most head teachers I talked to said the physics teacher is a big issue for them. Very often they haven’t got one.”

Pay for teachers is typically poor, and it’s a tough job with long hours, and generally no opportunities for working from home. “You are in front of 30 students, you have to be at the top of your game all the time,” said Sally.

Students in schools without specialist physics teachers are half as likely to go on to study A-level physics. More than 300 schools in England have none taking it, the report found. Unsurprisingly it is typically kids in the poorer areas who are worst affected.

Not only does this negatively impact opportunities for individual students, it also make it difficult to recruit scientists and innovators in key sectors such as quantum, photonics, nuclear and semiconductors, the report found.

‘Baked-in inequality’

Secondary school pupils from low-income families are “bounced out” of studying subjects like geography and languages because of concerns about the cost of field trips and excursions abroad, according to a survey of children in England. Fears about extra costs prevent almost a quarter of children on free school meals from choosing certain GCSE subjects.

“The reality is that some subjects just are no-go areas for lower-income families,” said Sally. “I remember when there would be school trips and parents would just say, ‘Sorry, we can’t afford it.’ I think it’s always been part of what’s going on in schools, but these differences have become much more acute.”

Other subjects with additional costs are music, which can require lessons and instruments; food and nutrition, due to the cost of ingredients; and PE, because of extra kit and equipment. Nine per cent of pupils who did not receive free-school meals said the cost – or concerns about the cost – prevented them from studying these subjects, according to Survation for the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).

“Kids from the poorest backgrounds are always at such a huge disadvantage. It’s not just what subjects they can study and it’s not just physics teachers,” said Sally. “They could be living in areas where it’s hard to attract good teachers, or they don’t have access to the same enrichment, or their families have less capacity to support them. This is something that I’m writing about all the time, and have been ever since I started this job over 10 years ago. It’s a kind of baked-in inequality that is very hard to deal with, and it’s basically about poverty.”

What is the attainment gap?

This year, A-level results in England reached a record high outside the pandemic era, However, the stark regional divide between London and the rest of the UK, particularly the north-east and East Midlands, has widened. This is down to a range of factors, including investment in London schools during the Blair government, the higher pay and attractiveness of working in London for teachers, and gentrification of the city.

The attainment gap between poorer students and their wealthier peers had been closing from about 2010 onwards, but that progress began to stall in 2018, probably because of funding pressures on schools, said Sally. Since Covid, the gap has grown and though there have been small signs of improvement recently, the gap remains far bigger than before the pandemic.

“Covid blew it all out of the water. The government would say there’s some evidence the attainment gap is closing slightly, but it’s still absolutely huge,” Sally said. “Disadvantaged four-year-olds are already on the back foot by the time they start school.”

What is Labour doing?

Since Labour has come in it has expanded free school meals, including introducing free breakfast clubs into all primary schools in England. From this week, working parents who earn up to £100,000 a year will be entitled to 30 hours’ free childcare a week during term time for children from the age of nine months until they start school. “Critics would say it barely scratches the surface,” said Sally.

Labour’s flagship child poverty strategy will not be published until autumn. The decision to push back the strategy comes amid concerns about the cost implications of ending the two-child limit on universal credit. Experts say scrapping the benefit limit would be the single most effective way of reducing child poverty – an estimated 100 children are pulled into poverty every day by the limit, meaning up to 20,000 could be affected by a six-month delay.

“Everybody is waiting to see the sort of child poverty strategy. I think that will be key to how their success is regarded,” said Sally. “At the heart of that is the two child benefit cap. The general feeling is that it needs to go, and it’s responsible for keeping too many families in poverty. Poverty is an enemy of opportunity.”

What else we’ve been reading

• Is Donald Trump a dictator? Adam Gabbatt surveys the US president’s inflammatory actions – from deploying the national guard to his compulsive use of executive orders. He speaks with political scientists about where Trump currently sits on the spectrum of between democracy, authoritarianism and outright dictatorship. (From more by Adam, sign up to his Week in Trumpland newsletter here.) Craille Maguire Gillies, newsletters team

• More and more people are blocking out the news because it fills them with dread. This piece examines the emotional toll of “doomscrolling”, and gives tips on how to stay engaged and not fall into a pit of negativity – if you can face reading it. Phoebe

• Dr Velislava Hillman is persuasive about how AI in education is a lot less revolutionary than big tech companies might make it seem. “What is sold as the ‘democratisation’ of education may be entrenching further inequality,” she writes, as the elite opt for human tutoring and the less-privileged are offered mass, app-based instruction. Craille

• Some great news from conservationists who have found Mexico’s jaguar population has increased 30%. The main thing they’ve done is protect natural areas to keep these beautiful cats away from cattle ranchers. “Mexico and the world need good news,” said one of the conservationists. Here’s to that. Phoebe

• Perhaps I am not a better cook after listening to episode 20 of the four-part podcast Home Cooking, but I am certainly charmed by the sibling-like camaraderie of its hosts, Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway. Craille

Sport

Football | Liverpool broke the British transfer record to sign Alexander Isak for £125m from Newcastle on deadline day but were foiled in an attempt to end a stunning window with a deal for Marc Guéhi. Transfer roundup

Golf | Europe will defend the Ryder Cup later this month with 11 of the 12 players who saw off the United States in Rome two years ago after captain Luke Donald unsurprisingly opted for experience with his wildcard picks.

Tennis | The All England Club is not looking to change the format of the Wimbledon mixed doubles competition for future editions of the Championships despite the success of the “reimagined” tournament at the US Open.

The front pages

A quarter of state secondary schools in England will start the new term with no dedicated physics teacher, with schools in poorer areas worst affected, analysis has found.

The lack of specialists means more than half (58%) of pupils studying for a science GCSE will have the physics component taught by a teacher who has not studied a physics-related subject beyond the age of 18.

An estimated 700,000 pupils are affected, according to the Institute of Physics, which carried out the analysis and is calling for urgent action to tackle what it describes as a “chronic and critical” shortage of specialist physics teachers.

The IoP report says students in schools without a specialist physics teacher are half as likely as those with sufficient physics specialists to go on to study A-level physics, “a crucial gateway” to further studies leading to careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem).

It calculates that more than 12,000 students are missing out on taking A-level physics as a direct result of having no specialist teacher, while more than 300 English state secondaries are failing to produce any pupils who progress to study physics at A-level.

The report says the shortage is having a bigger impact on students in disadvantaged areas because their schools are less likely to have “in-field” physics teachers, while independent and top-scoring state schools cream off the best recruits.

“Data show that only 4% of students in the lowest socioeconomic status quintile take physics A-level, compared with about 11% in the highest quintile, and that 70% of A-level physics students come from just 30% of schools,” it says.

It is not a new problem. The lack of physics teachers is down to three decades of low recruitment and high attrition rates, which have left the state system in need of an additional 3,500 specialists at a time when the country is facing a severe skills shortage.

There have been signs of improvement in physics teacher training recruitment, which went up from 17% of the government’s target in 2023 to 30% last year, but the report highlights problems with retention. Nearly half (44%) of newly trained physics teachers left the profession within five years, compared with a third of teachers overall.

The IoP is urging the UK government to invest in a £120m, 10-year programme to tackle the crisis. Tom Grinyer, the IoP’s chief executive, said: “This report paints a worrying picture of an education system struggling to find and keep the physics teachers we need. That means hundreds of thousands of young people being taught physics by non-specialists.

“Despite the often heroic efforts of teachers having to work in unfamiliar subjects, inevitably many of those students are missing out. Research shows that pupils without access to a specialist physics teacher are much less likely to choose to study the subject at A-level. If we fail to tackle this challenge then we are failing to nurture the scientists and innovators of tomorrow – with serious consequences for our society and economy.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are already delivering on our pledge to recruit and retain 6,500 more talented teachers, with 2,300 more secondary and special schoolteachers in classrooms this year, as well as 1,300 fewer teachers leaving the profession – one of the lowest leave rates since 2010.

“We’ve also seen a 25% increase in the number of people accepting teacher training places starting this autumn in Stem subjects. Through our plan for change, we will go further still to ensure every pupil has access to the expert teachers they need including continuing to offer tax-free incentives to encourage more talented people into the classroom to teach subjects including physics.”

Tom Middlehurst, the deputy director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Targets for recruiting trainee physics teachers are missed by very large margins. The underlying problem is that teaching salaries struggle to compete with the private sector, and this is compounded by workloads and responsibilities which affect retention.

“School leaders endeavour to mitigate those pressures but they’re operating under extremely difficult conditions with insufficient funding and demanding performance tables and inspections. The result is that it can be extremely difficult to put specialist physics teachers in front of classes, and schools often have no option other than to use non-specialists.”

Ryan Arnoldy started community college with the goal of eventually transferring to a four-year university and getting a degree in chemical engineering.

Soon Arnoldy started running up against the same exasperating bottleneck faced by a majority of university and college students: Classes required for his major were often not taught during the semesters he needed them, or filled so quickly there were no seats left.

Colleges and universities manage to provide these required courses when their students need to take them only about 15 percent of the time, new research shows — a major reason fewer than half of students graduate on time, raising the amount it costs and time it takes to get degrees. 

Now, with widespread layoffs and budget cuts on campuses, and as consumers are already increasingly questioning the value of a college education, the problem is expected to get worse. 

“What is more foundational to what we do as colleges and universities than offering courses to students so they can graduate? And yet we’re only doing it right 15 percent of the time,” said Tom Shaver, founder and CEO of Ad Astra, a company that provides scheduling software to 550 universities and whose research is the basis for that statistic.

Three years into his time at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, Arnoldy has completed so few required credits that he changed his major to computer science, almost lost his financial aid, considered dropping out and wasted time in classes he found irrelevant but were the only ones available. 

And he still has at least a year to go.

Though he’s determined to finish, and has narrowly held onto enough scholarships and grants to stay in school, being shut out of courses he needed to graduate means “I am going to literally spend four years in a community college to get a two-year degree,” said Arnoldy, who is 21. 

At one point, when he went to his counselor’s office for help with this, he remembered, “I was bawling. It seems like things should be simpler. A lot of my peers are frustrated, too.”

This kind of experience is, in fact, widespread. Fifty-seven percent of students at all levels of higher education end up having to spend more time and money on college because their campuses don’t offer required courses when they need them, according to a study last year by Ad Astra. 

Though its scheduling work means the company has a vested interest in highlighting this problem, independent scholars and university administrators generally confirm the finding.

“We’re forcing students to literally decelerate their progress to degrees, by telling them to do something they can’t actually do,” Shaver said. 

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Scheduling university and college courses is complex. Yet rather than use advanced technology to do it, some institutions still rely on “old-school” methods that include producing hard-copy spreadsheets, according to administrators trying to address the issue.

Mounting layoffs and budget problems in the wake of enrollment declines and federal spending cuts threaten to make this problem worse. 

Colleges and universities have collectively laid off thousands of faculty and staff in the last six months, with more downsizing expected. Others are further trimming their number of courses. 

The cash-strapped California State University system has eliminated 1,430 course sections this year, across seven of its 23 campuses, or 7 percent of the total at those campuses, a spokeswoman, Amy Bentley-Smith, confirmed. These include sections of required courses. At Cal State Los Angeles, for example, the number of sections of a required Introduction to American Government course has been reduced from 14 to nine.

“I would expect that course shutouts will start to get worse,” said Kevin Mumford, director of the Purdue University Research Center in Economics, who has also studied this.

In addition to taking longer and spending more to graduate, students who are shut out of required courses often change their majors, as Arnoldy did, or drop out, Mumford’s and other research has concluded.

Together with economists at Brigham Young University, Mumford found that when first-year students at Purdue couldn’t get into a required course, they were 35 percentage points less likely to ever take it and 25 percentage points less likely to enroll in any other course in the same subject. 

The students were part of a freshman class in 2018 that was 7 percent larger than expected, and more than half could not get into at least one of their top six requested courses.

Many changed their majors — especially away from science, technology, engineering or math, often abbreviated STEM. Every required STEM course a student couldn’t get into lowered the probability that he or she would major in one of those fields, according to the study, which was released in May. 

Women, already underrepresented in STEM, were particularly likely to quit, the study found. 

“There’s already a lot of pressure on women in STEM fields, and this appears to be just one obstacle too many,” Mumford said. 

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For every course they couldn’t get into, in any subject, women — though not men — were also more than 7 percent less likely to graduate within four years, with a financial toll averaging $800 for additional tuition and housing plus $1,500 in forgone wages.

Students at U.S. colleges and universities already spend more time and money getting their degrees than they expect to. Though 90 percent of freshmen say they plan to finish a four-year degree within four years or less, according to a national survey by an institute at UCLA last administered in 2019, federal data show that fewer than half of them do. More than a third still haven’t graduated after six years.

At community colleges nationwide, students who can’t get into courses they need are up to 28 percent more likely to take no classes at all that term, contributing to those delays in graduation, a 2021 study by scholars at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the nonprofit Mathematica concluded. Two years later, they found, the students were up to 34 percent more likely to have transferred to a different school, a decision that typically costs even more time and money.

Shaver, of Ad Astra, called course scheduling “one of the most mathematically complex optimization problems out there.” 

It requires balancing student demand with the availability of classrooms, labs and full- and part-time faculty, who are typically limited to teaching a maximum number of courses per term, take sabbaticals and sometimes prefer that their classes meet on Mondays through Thursdays in the middle of those days. 

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An increase in the number of students with double majors, minors and concentrations further complicates the process. So do the challenges confronted by part-time and older students, who typically don’t live on campus and have to juggle families and jobs. Such students are expected to comprise a growing proportion of enrollment as the number of 18- to 24-year-olds declines. 

“There are so many obstacles students face, from transportation to work schedules to child care. Some can only take classes in the afternoon or on the weekends,” said Matt Jamison, associate vice president of academic success at Front Range Community College in Colorado. 

Meanwhile, “we have instructors that have [outside] jobs and aren’t always available. And faculty can teach only so many courses.”

But Jamison found that students were being shut out of required classes at his college for other reasons that seemed harder to explain. 

Front Range offers in-person courses on three campuses and others that can be streamed online in real time, for instance. But class periods on the separate campuses and online had different starting and ending times. 

“Students couldn’t get courses they needed because they were scheduled over each other,” Jamison said.

Now the college has synchronized the schedules on all of its campuses and for courses taught live online. It’s adding course sections to better keep up with demand.

None of this is simple, Jamison said. The response from some faculty and staff on his campus about changing long-standing routines, he said, is “ ‘This is the way we’ve always done it.’ But it’s not necessarily the best way to do it.” 

Front Range is one of several colleges and universities trying to improve the chances that its students can get into the courses they need to graduate. Others are using more online courses to help students meet requirements. 

In California’s rural Central Valley, for example, community college students struggled to get into the advanced math courses they need toward degrees in STEM; only a third of the 15 community colleges in the area consistently offer the courses. So the University of California, Merced, launched a pilot program during the summer to provide these required classes online.

At Johnson County Community College, where Ryan Arnoldy goes, executive vice president and provost Michael McCloud acknowledged that students sometimes can’t get into classes they need. A big part of the problem, he said, is that they don’t meet with advisers who can help them plan their routes to degrees — a behavior he said he has seen increasingly among younger generations of students.

To address this, the college has begun requiring students to meet with advisers who can help them better plan which courses to take, and when. A small-scale pilot program showed that this, along with added tutoring and other student supports, improved success rates, McCloud said. The idea is being rolled out to all students.

“The hope is that this will help us on the scheduling end of things,” McCloud said. 

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Texas A&M University-San Antonio is using data to better track how many students are in each major, how many new students are expected, how many students fail and need to repeat required courses and whether there is capacity to increase class enrollments, said Duane Williams, associate vice provost of student success and retention.

“We have to be making the best decisions, and we can’t make them blindly,” Williams said.

The surprising fact that departments haven’t always done that, he said, is partly because “some folks may not have received the proper training. You would think higher ed as a whole would have systems for this, but some do, some don’t. Some are still doing it old school, where they’re just going to keep something on a sheet of paper.”

That may have been enough when there seemed to be an unlimited supply of students. But as public scrutiny of universities and colleges intensifies, and with enrollment projected to decline, institutions are pressed “to help students get in and get out and with the least amount of debt as possible,” Williams said.

Improving the scheduling of required courses seems a comparatively simple way to do this, Mumford said.

“For universities that have all these goals about getting students to graduate or to get more students into STEM,” he said, “this seems like a much cheaper thing to solve than many of the other interventions they’re considering.”

Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.

This story about shortages of required courses was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.