Bradley Perry is a PGCE Secondary Science (Physics) student at Sheffield Hallam. He was awarded a scholarship from The Institute of Physics to support him during his studies.

'The scholarship has provided me with free membership for the Institute of Physics so I can attend any events they hold. There is an event coming up at the Kennedy Space Centre in Leicester where experts will talk about how to relate certain principles of physics to our teaching and how we can develop our skills.

'They also have a membership programme which they offer to all scholars. You are assigned a local mentor, who is there to support you through your training with development advice and ideas for lessons. I have a lesson coming up on forces and I want to make sure it is engaging, so we're talking this through. My mentor runs regular workshops on good teaching techniques for a specific area of the curriculum and I can go to those for free.

'Plus, I will receive £30,000 over the course of my training which will allow me to pay off my tuition fees without taking out a student loan and also then save up some money for stability in the future. That will help me to get more established as a professional teacher, wherever I am able to work.

'I'm really interested in teaching lower sets and younger people at secondary school level. They're at that stage of asking 'why do I need to know this? When am I ever going to use it?' So I'm keen to make that connection by asking the question "why" and trying to get them engaged in practical experiments and discussions so they are contributing to their own learning. Why is glass see-through? Why is this metal stronger than this metal? …and so on.'

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