Hundreds of teacher vacancies have gone unfilled over the last three years, sparking fresh fears for recruitment into Scotland’s rural schools.
Figures released under freedom of information laws show that, between 2017/18 and 2019/20, nearly 2,800 positions were still empty by the application closing date or attracted zero responses.
Twenty-seven of 32 councils provided data, meaning the national total will be even higher.
Although general trends are improving in many areas, statistics show non-urban schools continue to be among the hardest hit.
The contrast between Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire is particularly stark. Just 14 vacancies in Scotland’s third largest city were unfilled between 2017 and 2020. In Aberdeenshire, the figure was 595.
READ MORE: Scottish teachers 'face a flood of malpractice complaints'
Laurence Findlay, Aberdeenshire Council’s Director of Education and Children’s Services, stressed that the annual total for his authority had “fallen significantly”. He also said “innovative” programmes aimed at encouraging individuals to consider a teaching career had produced “positive results”.
Other badly affected councils include Argyll and Bute (246), Perth and Kinross (219), East Lothian (118) and Angus (113). North Ayrshire, which takes in Arran and the Cumbrae Isles, recorded 384 unfilled or zero-application vacancies.
The Scottish Conservatives, who obtained the figures, accused ministers of letting down schools and pupils.
Oliver Mundell, Shadow Education Secretary, said: “The SNP have been in charge of our education system for over 14 years, but they continue to fail to go the extra mile to recruit extra teachers.”
He added: “The problem is particularly prevalent in our rural communities, which the SNP ignore all too often. These areas are crying out for teachers to support our pupils, but the SNP are failing to fully resource our education sector and our local authorities with what they require.
“The Scottish Conservatives are committed to pushing for a dedicated Rural Teacher fund to be set up to tackle these shortages.”
READ MORE: Scottish teachers threaten strike action over class sizes
Larry Flanagan, General Secretary at the EIS union, said: “There has been a challenge for a few years on teacher recruitment in parts of the country, particularly around small rural primaries, and also in relation to certain disciplines such as the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.
“Some councils seem to be more successful than others, however, in addressing this and the EIS would hope that through Cosla [which represents authorities] best practice is being shared.
"A national approach is required to ensure that our schools have the teachers required to support education recovery.”
A Cosla spokeswoman said: “Due to the ongoing Covid-19 situation and our continued main objective of getting the workforce in place to deliver the broad range of essential services to our communities, we have had to adapt our practices and procedures to suit.
“The bottom line however remains that councils, in line with our agreement with the Scottish Government, are fully committed to the employment of newly qualified, recently qualified and those teachers on supply lists."
READ MORE: Hope for £47k-a-year specialist teachers
Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said: “We have provided over £200 million to councils to support the recruitment of additional staff to support education recovery, which has helped recruit 1,400 teachers during the pandemic.
“And we will do more. In the first 100 days of government, we will also fund councils to increase teacher numbers by 1,000 and classroom assistants by 500. This is part of our commitment, over the parliamentary term, to support the recruitment of 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel