Graduates urged to teach science - graduate jobs

Science and IT graduates out of work due to the recession are being urged to retrain as teachers in a bid to ensure Britain`s state schools produce "the great scientists of tomorrow".

As part of a drive to increase the numbers of pupils studying sciences and maths, Prime Minister Gordon Brown will announce ambitious targets to double the number of state school pupils taking the three science subjects over the next five years.

Graduates made redundant in companies working in science, technology, engineering, maths and IT will be offered support from education consultants to help them consider retraining as teachers.

Mr Brown will argue that investment in science is key to Britain's future competitiveness, while pushing for an increase in the number of skilled teachers to ensure almost all state schools offer physics, chemistry and biology as separate subjects within five years.

In a speech in Oxford, he will talk of his plan to shift the UK economy away from its over-dependence on financial services and towards science and technology - promising not to let science become "a victim of the recession".

He is expected to say: "The time has come to build a society that seeks high-value engineering not financial engineering. A country whose young people are more inspired by those who give to the world, than by those who take from it."