Workforce planning is both an art and a science. Tailoring numbers of appropriately qualified schoolteachers to the number of posts involves inspired guesswork about both future teacher and pupil numbers.

Nobody is suggesting this is an easy subject but the report card on successive Scottish governments to have grappled with it must be, “Could do better”.

Today Scotland’s leading teaching union accuses the Scottish Government of jeopardising the educational prospects of future generations of pupils as a result of myopic cuts in training places.

Since 2003 training places have been expanded to cope with the looming retirement for many older teachers, plus political pledges on class sizes in early secondary. However, by 2007 hundreds of newly-qualified teachers were unable to get full-time jobs. Recent figures suggest more than a quarter of new teachers cannot find work. Several factors have combined to produce this situation. Far fewer teachers than predicted are opting for early retirement. Councils confronted with falling school rolls, closures, mergers and a testing financial climate, are employing fewer teachers rather than more and the few vacancies are often in remote rural schools.

Councils and the government blame one another for falling teacher numbers but regardless of who is right, the fact remains that talented, well-motivated individuals, attracted into teaching by the prospect of a rewarding, steady job, are now having to look elsewhere for work. This also risks damaging future recruitment prospects.

Meanwhile, it appears that some authorities are adopting the tactic of employing probationary teachers on one-year contracts, only to replace them with other probationers. The result is the insidious casualisation of the workforce. This may save money but it is in the interests of neither teachers nor pupils.

The EIS will be accused of banging its own drum but it is right to question whether the government’s workforce planning is as robust as it should be. There is currently a review of teacher education in Scotland. Surely, any major policy change should await its findings.

And though councils will be operating austerity budgets for the foreseeable future, other elements in the workforce planning equation suggest cutting training places may be premature. Many of those older teachers who have opted to stay at the chalkface will soon reach retirement age. Meanwhile, Scotland’s recent, unexpected mini-babyboom will be feeding through into bigger reception classes in some areas,in a year or two.

A good balance is desirable but ultimately having too many teachers is preferable to having too few.