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At a time when young people are navigating inflation, housing pressures, AI, taxation debates and growing economic uncertainty, economic literacy is becoming increasingly important.

It seems students recognise this, with A-level economics being one of the fastest-growing subjects in schools over the past few years - it now sits in fifth place in the list of most popular subjects after entries increased by 10.7 per cent to 46,365 this year.

Yet access to economics remains deeply unequal.

The lack of specialist teachers

shows that economics is available in around 90 per cent of selective state schools and 82 per cent of independent schools, but in only just over half of non-selective state schools.

Clearly, then, access to economics is not equal. One cause of this is the longstanding failure to take specialist economics teacher education seriously.

After teaching economics in secondary schools for 11 years and working in economics and business teacher education since 2015, I have repeatedly encountered the same challenge: schools want to offer economics, students want to study it, but recruiting specialist economics teachers remains difficult.

Economics is frequently taught by teachers whose specialism lies elsewhere, including business studies, mathematics and the social sciences.

A distinct discipline

Many of these teachers do excellent work and develop considerable expertise over time. Yet this approach reveals a wider assumption: that economics can simply be absorbed into neighbouring disciplines.

This assumption overlooks the distinctive nature of economics as a school subject. Economics is not merely a combination of mathematics, business studies and current affairs. It is a distinct discipline with its own concepts, methods and forms of reasoning.

Students are required to move between quantitative analysis and social explanation, interpret evidence, evaluate competing theories, analyse trade-offs and engage with contested policy questions.

Teaching economics, therefore, requires specialist curriculum understanding and pedagogical expertise on a raft of topics, ranging from inequality and government intervention in markets to questions of economic growth and sustainability, or the impact of AI on economies.

Clearly, then, learning to teach economics is not simply a matter of acquiring additional content knowledge. It requires teachers to cultivate deep expertise in their subject and how to teach it to students to help develop critical approaches to complex economic ideas.

No coherent system

This is something that can only truly be done through a specialist teacher education.

Yet there is still no coherent system for preparing specialist economics teachers.

For more than a decade, trainee economics teachers have not benefited from consistent bursary support.

While other shortage subjects have continued to receive targeted financial incentives, economics has largely been absent from recruitment policy.

Given that economics graduates will already be leaving university with significant debt, the thought of another year on a teaching course and yet more debt - and the reality of lower earnings than they may find in other careers - the lack of a bursary is a real blow.

Simply put, without meaningful financial support, many potential teachers will choose alternative pathways.

This matters because, as outlined earlier, a lack of economics teachers means that it is usually schools in more advantaged communities that are better positioned to recruit and retain specialist teachers.

State schools, meanwhile, are those that resort to using teachers from other subjects to offer the subject - if they offer it at all.

This all means that the opportunity for young people to develop their economic knowledge at a deeper level is unevenly distributed across the school system.

More defined routes

There are initiatives to counter this, with professional development and schemes supported by organisations such as the Bank of England showing a recognition of the need to offer teachers the skills required to boost their teaching in this area.

However, professional development cannot be a substitute for a coherent strategy for specialist teacher recruitment and preparation. It addresses the symptoms of the problem rather than its underlying causes.

If policymakers are serious about improving economic literacy and widening access to economics education, a more ambitious approach is needed.

That should include clearly defined PGCE economics routes, sustained bursary support, targeted recruitment of graduates and career changers, and stronger collaboration between universities, schools and institutions already active in economics education.

It would almost certainly be a worthwhile investment. Students want to study economics, and schools want to provide it. The demand is there.

The issue that must be addressed, then, is whether the system is prepared to invest in a way that ensures there is an adequate supply of specialist expertise to make sure that pupils in all schools have access to high-quality economics teachers.

Sonia Strnad is a teacher educator at the UCL Institute of Education. She taught economics across state and independent secondary schools for 11 years

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