MORE than 1000 Scottish teachers in the last two years have called a specialist phoneline set up to help classroom staff deal with stress.
Figures from the charity Teacher Support Scotland also show the number of issues reported more than doubled between 2010 and 2011 – from 675 to 1389.
Concerns raised by teachers range from health problems and anxiety to sleeplessness and the breakdown of relationships. Earlier this year, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union announced record payouts to teachers and college lecturers as a result of stress – including the largest out-of-court payment for a single case of £250,000.
Over the past few years, the number of teachers in Scotland has been cut by 4000, and there are also concerns classroom support staff are being sacrificed as part of budget cuts.
Recently, there have been shortages of supply staff in schools after a controversial pay-cut, and problems have emerged around the delivery of a new school curriculum with additional workload.
The profession, along with health and social service managers and social welfare associate professionals, has reported the highest rates of work-related stress within the last three years.
There were 10.8 million working days lost to the problem in the UK in 2010/11. On average, each individual took 27 days off work, with an estimated 32,000 cases of work-related stress in Scotland alone during this period.
In January, the Samaritans said employers need to do more to combat the problem.
Julian Stanley, chief executive of the Teacher Support Network, said: "Staff are under unprecedented professional and personal pressure. We know they are already faced with issues such as workload, structural change, a new curriculum and fear of redundancy, but they are also contending with the same issues we all must deal with such as concerns about money, health and relationships.
"The importance of this is that if a teacher is having a difficult time it can affect hundreds of pupils and their futures."
Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS, said teaching was widely recognised as a stressful profession, with the responsibility for the daily educational and personal needs of up to 33 children per class.
"The current budget-cutting agenda facing schools has only increased pressure on teachers, with sharp declines in both teacher and support staff numbers stretching teachers to the limit," he said.
"Stress-related illness is a real problem for the teaching profession, so employers must act to ensure that both teachers' health and well-being, and the educational experience of pupils, are properly supported."
However, John Stodter, general secretary of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, said all local authorities cared for their employees.
He said: "All councils in Scotland operate well-developed policies and procedures to ensure the health and safety of their employees, to manage absence and to exercise their duty of care and welfare towards workers.
"It is in everyone's interests to address issues of work-related stress as the costs of not doing so are very significant."
Teacher Support Scotland is launching a new range of services, including money management services with debt counselling, welfare benefit checks, an online budgeting tool and information services.
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