Teacher Training Scholarships Compared: IOP, RSC, BCS, British Council and the Maths Scheme That Ended

Teacher training scholarships are the least well understood part of ITT funding in England, and the misunderstanding is expensive in a specific way: people assume a scholarship is a bonus stacked on a bursary, calculate a training year's income accordingly, and are surprised. They are also poorly covered, because most guidance treats them as a footnote to the bursary table rather than as five separate schemes run by five separate organisations with genuinely different application processes, different windows, different eligibility thresholds and very different support programmes wrapped around them.

This page compares them properly. It is also, deliberately, where this site covers maths and chemistry. Neither subject has a dedicated page here, and the reason is set out honestly below: on the current recruitment census neither is a shortage subject, and their funding is identical to physics and computing, so a separate page for each would have nothing to say that this page and our bursaries guide do not already say. What maths and chemistry trainees actually need — what the professional bodies offer, and in maths's case the fact that the scholarship no longer exists — is here.

What a subject body scholarship actually is

The structure is the same across every scheme, and understanding it clears up most of the confusion in one go.

• The money is DfE money. Scholarships are funded by the Department for Education and delivered by a professional body under a grant agreement. The body selects recipients and runs the programme; it does not fund the award. This is why a body can simply stop delivering a scheme, as happened in maths for 2026/27, even though the department wanted one.
• It replaces the bursary. You receive the scholarship amount instead of the bursary amount, not in addition. In the sciences and computing that is £31,000 instead of £29,000. In French, German and Spanish it is £22,000 instead of £20,000. Either way, £2,000.
• It is competitive and capped. Bursaries are an entitlement — meet the criteria and your provider pays you. Scholarships have a fixed number of awards and a selection process, typically involving a personal statement and a reference, sometimes an interview or assessment.
• It requires a fee-funded, non-salaried course. Salaried School Direct and Teach First are excluded, because on those routes a school employs and pays you. Our route comparison covers that split.
• It does not get you a training place. Every scheme is conditional on you securing a place independently. The scholarship follows the place, never the other way round.
• The real value is the programme. CPD, subject-specific mentoring, a scholar community and professional body membership — usually running beyond the training year itself. This is the part worth choosing on.

The schemes side by side, 2026/27

The corresponding bursaries, for context, are £29,000 for chemistry, computing, maths and physics; £20,000 for all languages and design and technology; £5,000 for biology and geography; and nothing for English, art, music, religious education and every other subject. The full table with sources is on our bursaries and scholarships page, and this page does not repeat the detail behind it.

Institute of Physics — physics

£31,000, 175 awards for September 2026 entry. The IOP scheme is the one most explicitly tied to a national campaign about the state of its subject, and that shapes what being a scholar means.

• CPD workshops and events drawn from the IOP's professional development programme for practising physics teachers, not a trainee-only track.
• Subject-specific mentoring — which matters unusually much in physics, because a quarter of English state schools have no physics specialist at all, meaning your school mentor may not be one.
• A UK-wide network of fellow IOP scholars and physics teachers.
• Free IOP membership for the teacher training year.

Applications for 2026-27 entry have closed and the IOP directs prospective applicants to register interest in the 2027-28 round. The scheme has run annually for many years and the IOP publishes a contact address for its teacher scholarship team, which is a more reliable route to an eligibility answer than inference. Our physics teacher training support guide covers the scheme and the shortage data behind it in full.

Royal Society of Chemistry — chemistry

£31,000, up to 120 awards. Structurally the RSC scheme is very close to the IOP's, which makes sense — both are long-established learned societies delivering a DfE-funded award to a capped cohort. The package is, if anything, slightly more concrete:

• Mentoring by an expert chemistry teacher.
• A programme of professional development events, including hands-on practical training — genuinely useful in a subject where practical work is a substantial part of the job and a common source of early-career anxiety.
• Free online courses on key concepts in teaching chemistry.
• Free classroom materials — books, posters and a lab coat.
• Networking within the scholar community, plus access to Education in Chemistry and RSC teacher networks.
• Two years' free RSC membership — note the two years, which carries you past the training year into your first teaching post.

Eligibility for the 2026-27 round required a chemistry-related degree at 2:1 or above (a 2:2 considered alongside significant relevant experience), home fee status with eligibility for UK student finance, and a place on a fee-based non-salaried secondary PGCE or School Direct course in England leading to QTS, secured by September 2026. The application asks for academic and contact details, a referee, and a personal statement of up to 1,000 words.

The RSC is explicit about two things that all these schemes share but that it states most plainly: the scholarship replaces the government bursary rather than supplementing it, and receiving an award does not guarantee a training provider placement. Applications for 2026-27 have closed, with a registration option for 2027-28.

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT — computing

£31,000 for 2026-27. BCS runs the computing scholarship, and its programme leans more towards ongoing pastoral support than the event-based model of the science bodies:

• A year of pastoral and professional development support from the BCS team running alongside the training year.
• Webinars and CPD resources.
• Access to coaching and mentoring.
• A community of current and former scholars, practising computing teachers and computing subject matter experts.
• Two years' professional BCS membership, again extending into the first teaching post.

Eligibility required at least a 2:1 bachelor's degree, a master's or a PhD, and a place on a fee-based non-salaried secondary computing or computer science course leading to QTS starting in September 2026. Applications ran through the Prospects platform and closed on 26 June 2026. BCS also ran an information webinar in April 2026 during the window — worth looking out for in a future cycle, since it is the most direct way to put questions to the selection team. Our computing teacher training support guide covers the scheme alongside the subject's unusually volatile recruitment history.

Maths: the scholarship that ended

The reason is unusual and worth setting out, because it is not the story people assume. This was not a DfE cut.

The scheme was delivered by a consortium led by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, working with the London Mathematical Society, the Royal Statistical Society, Mathematics in Education and Industry, the Mathematical Association and STEM Learning, under a grant agreement with the DfE. For 2026/27, the IMA declined to extend that agreement. Its stated reason was that, due to the financial challenges of delivering its other wide-reaching commitments in education, it was not able to commit to participation in the scheme for 2026/27. The department, for its part, said it had intended to offer a maths scholarship. The IMA committed to supporting the cohorts already enrolled in the programme through 2025-26.

So the scheme ended because its delivery partner withdrew, not because the money was withdrawn. That is a genuinely different situation from the bursary cuts that hit eight subjects in the same cycle, and it says something about the fragility of the model: a scholarship exists only where a professional body is willing and able to run one. Need is necessary but not sufficient.

For the record, because it is useful context and because the consortium may return in a future cycle, the maths scheme's non-cash offer was structurally similar to the science bodies': two years' free membership of mathematical professional bodies, access to professional resources, CPD events with invited speakers, networking with experienced teachers, and membership of a community of mathematics specialists. If the scheme is revived, that is roughly what it would be expected to look like.

What maths trainees should actually do in the meantime:

• Take the £29,000 bursary, which needs no application. Your training provider administers it once you hold a place and meet the degree and student finance criteria.
• Join the professional bodies directly if the community was what you wanted. The IMA, LMS, RSS, MEI, the Mathematical Association and STEM Learning all exist independently of the scholarship, and several run student or early-career membership rates.
• Use STEM Learning and the maths hubs network for CPD. The national maths hubs programme is open to all maths teachers and trainees, is not scholarship-gated, and is arguably the single best subject-specific professional development infrastructure in English education.
• Do not let the absence of a scholarship influence your subject choice. The difference was £2,000 in a training year. Maths remains on the top bursary tier and on the Targeted Retention Incentive list.
• Check whether the scheme has returned for your start year rather than assuming either way — the DfE said it wanted a maths scholarship, so a future cycle with a different delivery partner is entirely plausible.

British Council — French, German and Spanish

£22,000, 175 awards for 2026/27. The languages scholarship sits on a different funding tier because the languages bursary does — £20,000 rather than £29,000 — so the scholarship differential is the same £2,000 but from a lower base.

The restriction that catches people out is the language list: only French, German and Spanish qualify. Trainees in other modern languages or in ancient languages receive the £20,000 bursary and have no scholarship route at all. Payment runs monthly from October to July with additional payments in February and in July or the final month of the course, and the scheme carries professional development support aimed at preparing scholars for a career in modern foreign language education. Eligibility required a 2:1 or above, or a relevant master's or PhD, and a place on an eligible non-salaried secondary MFL course leading to QTS in England secured by September 2026. Applications for 2026-27 have closed. Our MFL teacher training support guide covers the languages position in full, including the significant fact that MFL is excluded from the Targeted Retention Incentive entirely.

Maths and chemistry are no longer shortage subjects on the census

This deserves stating plainly, because it is the reason this site does not have dedicated maths and chemistry pages and because it is genuinely useful information for anyone planning a career in either.

In the DfE's Initial Teacher Training Census for 2025/26, published 4 December 2025:

All four subjects share the same £29,000 bursary and the same Targeted Retention Incentive eligibility. On the recruitment numbers, two of them are comfortably over target and two are not. That gap is the central oddity of the current incentive structure, and it is visible from outside the DfE: the Targeted Retention Incentive now pays two subjects that recruit above target while excluding the five subjects with the largest recruitment shortfalls — business studies at 30% of target in 2025/26, drama at 42%, religious education at 63%, music at 65% and design and technology at 71%.

None of which means maths or chemistry is a bad choice, or that the funding is wrong for you personally. It means something narrower and more useful: the shortage-subject framing you will encounter in older guidance no longer describes maths or chemistry accurately, and the practical consequences follow from that. Expect more competition for training places than the framing implies. Expect less recruitment leverage at offer stage than a physics teacher has, when you come to negotiate your starting pay point. And treat the continuation of the top-tier bursary into future cycles as an open question rather than a given, since the DfE has said openly that incentive funding tracks the recruitment pipeline, and cut incentives in eight subjects on exactly that reasoning for 2026/27.

Is a scholarship actually worth applying for?

Yes, on a straightforward expected-value argument — but not for the reason most people assume, and it is worth separating the two halves.

The case against applying is essentially just the application effort — a personal statement, a referee, and in some schemes an interview or assessment. There is no financial downside, because an unsuccessful application leaves you on the bursary you would have had anyway, and no scheme penalises applicants who are not selected.

The one genuine risk is opportunity cost of attention. Every scheme is conditional on you holding a place on an eligible course, and the place is the thing that actually determines whether you train. If you find yourself polishing a scholarship personal statement while your training applications sit unfinished, you have the priorities backwards.

How to apply, whichever subject

Sources and accuracy

Scholarship values, the list of scholarship-awarding bodies (Royal Society of Chemistry, BCS, Institute of Physics and British Council), the absence of a mathematics scholarship for 2026/27, the language category definitions and the student finance eligibility rule including the 5pm 7 May 2026 cut-off are from the Department for Education's Initial teacher training bursary funding manual: 2026 to 2027 academic year on GOV.UK.

Institute of Physics details — the £31,000 value, 175 awards for September 2026 entry, the closure of the 2026-27 window, the register-interest route for 2027-28, and the CPD, subject-specific mentoring, scholar network and free training-year membership benefits — are from the IOP's teacher training scholarships pages and NASBTT's notice of the scheme. Royal Society of Chemistry details — up to 120 awards at £31,000, the degree and home-fee eligibility criteria, the 1,000-word personal statement, the mentoring, professional development events, online courses, classroom materials, scholar networking and two years' RSC membership, and the explicit statements that the scholarship replaces the bursary and does not guarantee a placement — are from the RSC's teacher training scholarships pages. BCS details — the £31,000 value for 2026-27, the 26 June 2026 Prospects deadline, the degree requirement, the April 2026 information webinar, and the pastoral and professional development support, webinars, CPD resources, coaching and mentoring, scholar community and two years' BCS membership — are from BCS's computing teacher scholarships pages and its published scholarship listing. British Council details — the £22,000 value, 175 awards, the French, Spanish and German restriction, the degree threshold and the October-to-July monthly payment pattern with additional payments in February and the final month — are from the British Council's Languages Teacher Training Scholarships pages.

The account of the mathematics scholarship ending, including the IMA's stated reason, its commitment to the 2025-26 cohort and the DfE's position that it had intended to offer a scholarship, is from Schools Week's reporting of 7 October 2025 on the 2026/27 ITT funding decisions, which is also the source for the bursary cuts across eight subjects and the DfE's rationale. The maths consortium membership and its non-cash offer are from the IMA's and the scheme's own published pages.

Recruitment figures are from the DfE's Initial Teacher Training Census, academic year 2025/26, published 4 December 2025 on Explore Education Statistics, including the subject percentages and entrant counts for chemistry, mathematics, computing and physics and the figures for the lowest-recruiting subjects. Note that some press reporting of the same census rounds physics to 77%, computing to 80% and maths to 113%; we use the department's own rounded figures throughout for consistency. The physics five-year attrition figure is from the Institute of Physics's September 2025 report on the physics teacher shortage.

These schemes are renewed cycle by cycle under grant agreements that a professional body can decline to extend, as maths demonstrated. Do not assume any scheme described here will exist in the form described in a future cycle. Check the current funding manual on GOV.UK and the relevant body's own pages before making a financial decision. This is independent guidance for orientation, not financial or careers advice, and it is not affiliated with the Department for Education, any of the professional bodies named, or any teaching union.