Applications to postgraduate teacher education programmes in Scotland have fallen by 28 per cent in a year, figures obtained by Tes show.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) figures show the number of applications made to postgraduate teacher education courses in Scotland by the 26 January deadline. In 2021, by the January deadline, there had been 19,500 applications for postgraduate teacher education courses in Scotland, but this year just 13,960 applications had been made - a drop of 28 per cent.
The number of applications made by the January deadline this year was also down on 2020, when there were 14,480 applications to postgraduate courses, and 2019, when there were 14,620 applications.
This year’s figures, therefore, represent not only a 28 per cent decrease on last year but also a 4.5 per cent decrease on the pre-pandemic level in 2019.
Drop in initial teacher education applications
Professor David Smith, head of the University of Aberdeen’s school of education and the chair of the Scottish Council of Deans of Education (SCDE), said that the SCDE was aware of the application data and that it was “continuing to work proactively alongside government and other education stakeholders to highlight the rewarding career that teaching offers”.
He said that if the 2021 figures were discounted as a “pandemic outlier”, then the number of applications this year was only “modestly lower than in 2020 (less than 4 per cent) and 2019 (less than 5 per cent)”. He said it would “take time to establish if we are seeing a notable decline in demand to become a teacher”.
Professor Smith added: “At present, Scottish higher education institutions are busy interviewing prospective student teachers and are offering places to those successful candidates.
“At this application level, demand is still high and SCDE member institutions will be interviewing for months to come. We will also continue, in many instances, to accept applications for teacher education programmes starting in academic year 2022.”
He said: “The Scottish Council of Deans of Education is committed to supporting the needs of the teaching profession. While we will be keeping the admission figures under close watch, we will also be working to ensure that we attract the appropriate number of high-calibre student teachers in support of Scottish education.”
Postgraduate teacher education courses are the main route into primary and secondary teaching in Scotland.
For 2022-23, the Scottish Funding Council has asked universities to recruit 1,155 primary student teachers on to postgraduate courses and 779 on to undergraduate routes. The target for secondary postgraduate courses is 2,000 and for undergraduate courses it is 336.
That means that in the coming academic year universities have been given the task of preparing an extra 200 secondary teachers, compared with this year.
The target for the number of primary student teachers to be recruited is the same as this academic year in recognition of “historical over-recruitment in primary”.
In the early days of the pandemic there was optimism that the hard work of teachers could have a positive impact on recruitment. In an interview with Tes Scotland in June 2020, Ken Muir, then chief executive of the General Teaching Council for Scotland, described teachers as “heroes” and suggested their professionalism could boost recruitment.
However, these most recent Ucas figures suggest that any gains could be short-lived.
In November, Tes reported that initial teacher training (ITT) applications in England had dropped below pre-pandemic levels in 2019, which was causing concerns around teacher numbers.
