HEADTEACHERS have come under pressure to "inflate" the number of teachers in their schools in a national census, a union has warned.

The claim came as the Scottish Government carries out an annual teacher census which assesses how many school staff each council area has across Scotland.

The Association of Headteachers and Deputies in Scotland (AHDS) said a number of local authorities had pressurised their members to include specialist advisers or quality improvement staff as well as classroom teachers.

The census is critical to the funding of councils because they have signed up to a pledge to protect teacher numbers with those that miss their targets facing financial penalties.

A spokesman for the AHDS said: "It has come to our attention that a minority of local authorities are putting considerable pressure on headteachers to submit misleading census returns – by suggesting central staff are on a census return despite the fact they were not in school on census day.

"Our advice to members, specifically in relation to these returns, is not to sign off inaccurate returns. If others are signing off returns on their behalf without them having sight of and agreeing with the information, they should query this immediately.

"In short, the advice is that members should always ensure that they understand and agree with any information being submitted before they sign it or consent to it being submitted in their name."

The issue has been taken up by Michael Russell, the MSP for Argyll and Bute and former Education Secretary in the Scottish Government, after suggestions that the local authority was one of those involved.

He said: "I am very concerned at the warning from the association. The information about attempts to cheat the teaching census..... must have come directly from their own members in schools.

"I shall be asking the Scottish Government to be very vigilant with regard to these returns. They relate to a central issue of vital importance to parents, pupils and Scottish education - the employment of the right number of teachers in classrooms the length and breadth of the country.

"Councils receive money to support the maintenance of teacher numbers, so submitting false returns would be an act of deliberate financial fraud."

A spokeswoman for Argyll and Bute Council said: "The process for undertaking the staff census is not yet complete and therefore we are not able to respond to the figures at this time. We will be submitting these figures in line with Scottish Government guidance."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "We are committed to ensuring we have the right number of teachers, with the right skills, in the right places to educate our young people.

"These are national statistics and local authorities are obliged to make sure their returns are correct and they will be subjected to robust checking to confirm the accuracy of the data provided."

The Scottish Government pledge on teachers came after school staff numbers plummeted to a ten year last year.

There are currently 50,824 nursery, primary and secondary teachers in Scotland, the lowest number since 2003 and more than 4,200 fewer than in 2007 when the SNP came to power.

Teaching unions condemned councils' failure to meet the agreement and highlighted a loss of 254 teachers in the past year alone - which they said equated to a cut of almost ten million pounds.

Following the publication of the last census John Swinney, the Finance Secretary, threatened to cut council funding unless authorities gave a "clear commitment to protect teacher numbers".