Scotland has a surplus of 1,000 teachers who cannot find work | The teachers have been trained because of an SNP pledge to recruit 3,500 additional teachers but dwindling pupil numbers mean there are now too many

by backupJM

21 comments

  1. >The new modelling revealed that fewer than 600 primary recruits are required each year to keep the pupil-teacher ratio at 2021 levels. However, more than 1,000 students have entered training every year for the past seven years “in line with the government’s commitment to increase teacher numbers by 3,500 by 2026”.

    >The report states: “Up to 2021 this level of initial teacher education was mostly absorbed by an increase in teacher numbers. However, in the past two years primary teacher numbers have dropped, meaning that there have been substantially more new teachers trained than have been employed.

    >“Since 2016-17 around 1,000 primary teachers have completed probation but not been able to secure subsequent employment because of job availability.”

    >Workforce modelling published in May last year revealed the decline in Scotland’s birthrate was even steeper than previously projected. But the SNP government pressed on with the recruitment of hundreds of surplus trainees.

    >Only 740 primary school trainees are required to maintain teacher numbers next year, more than 20 per cent below the present target of 955. Only 910 secondary trainees are required, less than half the current target of 2,000.

    >Despite these figures, a report by the government agency Education Scotland last year claimed that a shortage of teachers was denying secondary school pupils the chance to study maths, Gaelic or business

    …

    >The Scottish government’s teacher workforce planning advisory group has recommended cutting the secondary target to 1,500 in the next university intake, with the primary target cut to just over 900 next year and about 850 the next year.

    >The new targets will be confirmed next month by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the non-departmental public body charged with funding further and higher education institutions.

    >Students are guaranteed a paid one-year placement after graduation but more than a third were dismissed after their probation year in 2023, compared with about one in ten in 2017.

    …

    >The additional teachers were partly required to cut the number of hours spent in the classroom, to free up time for lesson planning and career development, but this manifesto commitment also remains unfulfilled.

    >Scotland has one of the lowest birthrates in the world at just 1.3 children per woman, well below the 2.1 required to prevent depopulation. Primary school pupils peaked at about 400,000 in 2017 and are projected to plummet to about 300,000 by 2035.

    >This poses a challenge for policymakers seeking to balance the falling demand for education and childcare with pressure from parents, unions and opposition politicians to maintain teacher numbers and prevent the closure of increasingly unsustainable schools and nurseries.

    The IFS also reported on this recently: [Scottish Government and Scottish councils need a long-term plan for a schools system set to lose 90,000 pupils](https://ifs.org.uk/news/scottish-government-and-scottish-councils-need-long-term-plan-schools-system-set-lose-90000)

    Due to our ageing population and declining birth rates, we are seeing fewer pupils. However, alongside that, due to budgetary constraints, councils can’t afford to retain teachers.

    The teachers _can_ (and should) be utilised, as the article mentions, to fulfil manifesto pledges to reduce the teacher to pupil ratio, as well as to cut the number of hours spent in the classroom. We’ve also seen reports of a shortage of teachers, particularly in [secondary](https://www.scotsman.com/education/primary-teachers-asked-to-plug-gaps-in-scottish-secondary-schools-amid-staff-shortages-4629654). The bigger issue, rather than declining student numbers, is that councils can’t afford to hire and retain the teachers. The issue is funding.

  2. There are not “Too many teachers”, there is not enough hirings.

    Thank you for coming to my talk.

  3. Could teacher salaries be frozen for five years to accommodate the additional costs I wonder? Would keep budget availability for additional teachers and improve the profession ?

  4. > dwindling pupil numbers

    This feels like deliberate framing to try to justify a policy of not wanting to invest in public social services. The teachers I know do an amazing job but are quite severely overworked / overstretched, I would be very surprised if we didn’t need to hire more teachers.

  5. All schools could do with more teachers but they don’t have the funds due to cuts. Dwindling pupil numbers seems an excuse

  7. Sounds like we need to slow down investment in teacher training and up it in teacher placement.

  8. ‘Dwindling pupil numbers’

    Seems a bit odd not to have control over our own immigration policy………….. but apparently we’re ‘Better Together’

    Aye right 🙄

  9. Going to get worse. Highland Council school roll projections show many schools down a third in 15 years, city centre and rural. Even the best case examples are 15%. Major shortage of young workers coming.

  10. You could see this happening 15 years ago and it’s only got worse. Loads just ended up as supply or maternity cover

  11. They could use those extra teachers to reduce class sizes or offer more support for ASN pupils but the opposite is true, even though this was also an SNP pledge in in recent times!!

  12. > The new modelling revealed that fewer than 600 primary recruits are required each year to keep the pupil-teacher ratio at 2021 levels.

    Why do they not mention what that ratio is? That’d be a useful information to gauge whether we want to stay at that level or whether classes were overcrowded at the time and it’d actually be beneficial to recruit.

    What I’ve [found on the government’s website](https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-schools-scotland/pages/5/): Primary school: 23.2 pupils per class (PTR to 15.1 though presumably because of substitutes?)

  13. Same thing happening with nurses. I know someone going into her final year and is worried about no job at end of her studies

  14. It’s just so depressingly snp.

    Make a big populist pledge, implement it without thinking about the long term consequences then refuse to acknowledge the mistake or reverse the policy.

    See also MUP, ‘free’ tuition, the curriculum for excellence, rent controls etc etc

    In this case we get to see a lovely intersection of two seperate populist policies not working: 

    1.training more teachers than we have vacancies for.

    2. Freezing council tax so local authorities cannot afford to reduce class sizes and thereby create more vacancies.

    They have been in control for 18 years. These were obviously predictable problems.

  15. Labour:

    >The best thing to do is to cut welfare benefits for disabled people and cut taxes for huge American technology companies! That will solve this issue of the SNP’s making.

  16. Apparently theres no permanent posts being offered so teachers are basically now mercenaries working year to year hoping they get another year

  19. I’m a councillor on Highland Council and our schools are **struggling** to find teachers. I’m told that they’re having similar problems in Glasgow. So I think it’s time to say _”I think you’ll find it’s more complicated than that”_ …

  20. The population have been priced out of affording kids so now we have too many teachers, We live in a cartoon world don’t we. Any minute now a giant foot will drop out of the clouds a playing the bagpipes and squish us all into the ground

  21. I question their logic for choosing to study teaching right now!

    Were they offered extra large burseries or something else that made them ignore the current economy and what teachers are going through?

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