Two UK programmes to place school teachers in a university setting are compared; the Excellence Fellowship Awards Pilot Scheme and the School Teacher Fellows Scheme. In this paper we compare the School Teacher Fellow Scheme supported by Bristol ChemLabS (Shallcross et al., 2013a, 2013b) and subsequently by the Royal Society of Chemistry with the Excellence Fellowship, focussing on the recruitment and support of fellows and their impact on transition from secondary to tertiary education, secondary school chemistry teaching, tertiary teaching of chemistry in general, and then more specific impacts on their own teaching and career. Examples of the work undertaken by the School Teacher Fellows are noted.