There is a “huge weight of expectation” on secondary headteachers, says David Barnett, incoming general secretary of School Leaders Scotland.

Heads in the secondary sector - which SLS represents - are grappling with an ever-increasing range of student support needs as resources and support diminish, all while the “constant pressure” to raise attainment remains.

Also in the mix is a change in parent expectations since the Covid pandemic.

“There is a tendency for parents not to be as patient or as understanding with a school’s position, and that can place schools under pressure,” Barnett tells Tes Scotland in his first interview since being chosen to start as general secretary in September.

Teacher recruitment difficulties

Recently, however, the issue that SLS has been keen to shine a light on is recruitment.

This month the organisation released the results of a survey of 147 secondary schools showing that more than a third “have had to adjust their curriculum offer due to staff shortages”. It found that business studies, computing, home economics, languages, modern studies and physics were among the subjects losing a foothold in Scottish school timetables - or disappearing altogether - because of teacher shortages.

But even the most in-demand subjects were not immune.

“People are finding it very hard to get English teachers and maths teachers,” Barnett says. “English and maths are real drivers of attainment. If you can’t get teachers in those subjects, that’s really going to hold you back as a school, and it’s ultimately the young people who are affected by that.”

He adds: “You get headteachers and school leaders being told, ‘Your attainment is not good enough - we need to improve attainment.’ How can they do that if they can’t even get an English teacher? That makes it really, really difficult.”

• Background: The subjects being squeezed out by teacher shortages in Scotland
• News: Should teachers and students work from home once a week?
• Related: Gilruth announces review of Teacher Induction Scheme

A steady staffing complement is also needed to tackle another key issue for schools: behaviour.

Barnett, who will take over from Graham Hutton as SLS general secretary, says: “You might think, why is behaviour in one school better than another? Often it has to do with the ethos of the school and how the school is run. But if you have got a succession of supply staff coming in because you can’t get the right teachers then that will be disruptive. You need a stable staff.”

Having spent his career and life in the North East of Scotland - where securing teachers tends to be difficult, even in times of plenty - Barnett has personal experience of these issues to draw on.

Born in Huntly in 1968, Barnett started his career as a French teacher at Fraserburgh Academy in Aberdeenshire, before eventually leading Buckie High School and Elgin Academy in Moray, followed by Cults Academy in Aberdeen.

He left Cults in 2023 and for the past two years has been SLS national officer.

“Even in Aberdeen, as headteacher of Cults Academy, a very attractive school to work in and serving an affluent area, with lots of young people who want to do well and supportive parents in Scotland’s third-biggest city, there were times when we couldn’t get particular teachers,” he says. “I remember it took us a long time to recruit a teacher of maths.”

Making teaching more attractive

SLS is calling for improved pay and conditions for teachers to make the job more attractive.

Negotiations over the 2025-26 teacher pay deal are ongoing, with the best offer to date being a 3 per cent increase, which was roundly rejected by the teaching unions.

Barnett says: “We need to look at initial teacher education and the numbers coming in and, of course, to get those numbers coming in you have to make teaching look like an attractive profession, and that’s where things like pay and conditions matter.

“Teachers are reasonably well paid but they could be better paid.”

He adds: “For a lot of young people it’s about the conditions as well.

“Young people will see jobs where they’ve got hybrid working or different ways of doing things. Teaching so far isn’t like that and it’s hard to see how it can be. So, how do we make the profession more attractive? That is something we have got to work at together.”

At the AGM of Scotland’s biggest teaching union, the EIS, in Aviemore last week, it was suggested that senior students and secondary teachers could work from home one day a week. The motion was overwhelmingly rejected, but increasingly there is a recognition that the inflexible hours that teachers work are lessening the appeal of the job.

For the past two years running just half of the places on the one-year postgraduate PGDE route into secondary teaching - the route followed by the vast majority of secondary staff - have been filled. But for hard-to-recruit-to subjects such as computing, CDT (craft, design and technology) and maths, the proportion of places filled is far lower.

In 2024-25 just 56 per cent of places on PGDE courses to become an English teacher were filled - 248 places were funded by the government, but just 138 were filled.

Class-contact time

Barnett also addresses the Scottish government’s high-profile promise that the time teachers spend in front of classes will be reduced by 90 minutes per week.

Progress on delivering that promise - made in the SNP’s 2021 Scottish Parliament election manifesto - has been described as “glacial” by the teaching unions. Last week both the EIS and the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association opened ballots to find out if teachers are prepared to strike over the issue. The ballots are due to run until the end of August.

Barnett says heads are keen to see the reduction in contact time, and that more non-class contact time should make for a better experience for students. But schools will need to have the right staff in place, he adds.

“We will need more teachers - that’s a given - and we are left wondering where are these teachers going to come from?” Barnett says.

SLS calculates that, in a medium-sized secondary of 1,350 students, another 7.4 full-time teachers would be required to deliver the pledge.

Because of the current surplus of primary teachers there have been rumblings that perhaps this sector could benefit first before full implementation of the contact-time policy - but Barnett warns against this.

“The teachers’ contract is the same whether you are a secondary teacher or a primary teacher,” he says. “So pay and conditions are the same in primary and in secondary. If you start changing that for one sector, it could be the thin end of a much larger wedge. That wouldn’t be a particularly positive thing.”

The teaching unions have, however, said that they would accept a phased introduction of the class-contact time reduction.

Education secretary Jenny Gilruth has promised to provide “a clear route map to implementation” no later than the end of June. A previous deadline of February was missed, albeit that date was set by the teaching unions.

On the bigger picture, Barnett says: “There has been so much change that has been promised in Scottish education, and so much change that hasn’t really happened yet.”

There have been reviews of qualifications and assessment, and additional support for learning, as well as a promise to reform key education bodies and the publication of the behaviour action plan. But teachers say all this industry has resulted in little tangible change on the ground.

Now, in response to the over-supply of primary staff and and under-supply of secondary staff, the education secretary has promised a review of the Teacher Induction Scheme - which guarantees teaching graduates in Scotland a year-long post in a school to carry out their probation.

For Barnett, “getting teacher recruitment right” must be the key priority.

If the schools system is properly resourced and schools are properly staffed, he says, this will improve attainment, fuel innovation - and, ultimately, improve the overall school experience for young people.

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