Scottish children are being taught by “a rotating cast of short-term staff”, resulting in a lack of continuity that is negatively impacting learning, according to a group campaigning for job stability for teachers.
The group Scottish Teachers for Permanence - which is made up of more than 4,000 educators - made the comments in the wake of an online survey that it conducted, in which nearly 90 per cent of respondents reported that their school does not have enough permanent teachers
The publication of the results coincides with the issue of secondary school teacher shortages being raised in the Scottish Parliament.
Teacher shortages
Today Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton flagged up the government’s failure to hit its secondary teacher-education targets - with just 16 computing teachers on the postgraduate training route this year. He accused first minister John Swinney of lacking the “passion” and “hunger” to resolve the problem of teacher shortages.
The Scottish Teachers for Permanence survey elicited more than 1,500 responses, with the majority from parents (65.4 per cent) and teachers (21.1 per cent).
One respondent said: “My daughter’s class has had six different teachers this year. Not one has done a full week. This happened last year, too. How can a class progress like that?”
Another commented: “As a parent, I just want stability for my child. Knowing who their teacher is and trusting that they’ll be there all year used to be a given. Not any more.”
The vast majority of respondents (97 per cent) said instability in school staffing was directly affecting pupils’ learning.
Scottish Teachers for Permanence said the results showed that job instability was not just an issue for teachers but also “a community-wide concern”
It is calling for an education system that “invests in its teachers, values continuity and recognises that education does not thrive on short-term contracts”.
The research follows data published by the Scottish government last week, which put a figure on the “excess” of primary teachers trained in recent years.
The paper, which was produced as part of the government’s teacher workforce planning exercise, said that around 1,000 too many primary staff had been put through teacher education programmes since 2016-17, with most of the surplus “accumulated in recent years”.
Mismatch between supply and demand
This mismatch between supply and demand occurred after university teacher-education course targets were artificially inflated in line with the government’s promise to recruit an additional 3,500 teachers during the course of the current parliamentary term.
However, the jobs available in schools failed to keep pace, with the number of teachers in Scotland falling in recent years. This has left many primary staff, in particular, struggling to find work
In secondary, meanwhile, there is oversupply when it comes to some subjects but chronic undersupply for specialisms such as maths, computing and design and technology.
Data last week showed that the government wanted to train 250 maths teachers in 2024-25 but managed to recruit just 75.
Today Mr Cole-Hamilton put the figures to Mr Swinney, saying that chemistry, physics, biology and computing were also “hundreds of trainee teachers short”. He questioned how Scotland could compete internationally “if our schools cannot teach these subjects properly”.
Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “This is our kids we’re talking about - this is about their futures. Where is the hunger, where is the passion to resolve this?”
Mr Swinney responded that the government is working with councils to increase teacher numbers, investing more than £186 million in 2025-26 to ensure teacher numbers “reach 2023 levels”.
The first minister, who also highlighted the Stem bursary, said there was “no lack of energy” within government to ensure that schools are well supported, adding: “The government has delivered its side of the bargain in relation to financial support to local authorities, and I look to local authorities to recruit.”
Targets for teacher-education courses are expected to fall in 2025-26 but not to the levels recommended by the government’s statistical modelling, after concerns were raised about the impact on cash-strapped universities.
Tes Scotland analysis of Scottish government data shows that 21 per cent of primary teachers were on temporary contracts last year, and 14 per cent of secondary staff.
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