THE promise to protect teacher numbers is one of the Scottish Government’s flagship policies and a relatively easy one to sell on the doorsteps, but it is also one of its most controversial. Councils, who can be fined for not maintaining teacher numbers, see targets as a crude instrument and an unnecessary straightjacket at a time of tight resources. Some also fear that meeting the targets can become the priority rather than raising standards in schools and closing the attainment gap.

In the face of this criticism, the Scottish Government has remained committed to its line in the sand, but even more concern has now been raised - and from a most respected source. According to a Royal Society of Edinburgh report on a meeting between government officials and educational researchers, the policy of maintaining teacher numbers could be making it harder to close the attainment gap in schools. The worry expressed in the report is that, although there is a £100million fund aimed at schools in disadvantaged areas, the cost of maintaining teacher numbers means councils are not able to prioritise their resources and target money on pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds as they see fit.

There is a certain logic to the argument. Teaching salaries represent the largest chunk of any council’s educational spend and if they are unable to touch that money, they cannot spend it on other areas. The money available specifically to tackle the attainment gap is also limited – schools in deprived areas do receive extra funds, but even the £100m Scottish Attainment Fund looks small compared to the billions spent on education every year. The bottom line is that if we want to seriously tackle the deprivation that affects education in some communities, more money will have to be found and teacher targets effectively means that money can never come from the teaching budget.

The policy looks flawed in a number of other areas too. For instance, fining councils for failing to meet the targets risks making tight budgets even tighter. It also punishes councils that have failed to fill teacher vacancies through no fault of their own – in remote rural areas, for example. And the risk of councils shifting their focus to targets above all else is also real – the recent case in which North Lanarkshire Council submitted inaccurate information to a national teacher census would appear to prove it.

However, flawed as the policy may be, it is hard to see how a cut to teacher numbers can be a good thing, even if councils could use the money to tackle deprivation. National teacher numbers are a crude measure, but schools need teachers and, as a general principle, the assertion that we should not lose any more is a standard worth fighting to maintain. The councils that have maintained teacher numbers also deserve praise for doing so in difficult circumstances.

The argument over the teacher target policy is far from over though and it seems likely that the policy will need re-tuning. In particular, is a national target appropriate when different schools face different circumstances? A more appropriate policy might be to have minimum staffing levels for individual schools based on their circumstances. The number of teachers in Scotland is undoubtedly a standard worth defending, but the policy is not yet as focused or as intelligent as it needs to be.