Teacher recruitment challenges in Scotland

The Scottish Government wants to train 4k graduates to work in schools across Scotland this year. The Times Education Supplement (TES) reports that many newly qualified primary teachers fail to find permanent jobs on qualifying. This is a demoralising, confidence-sapping experience for mainly young people who wish to enter the profession. It is also a tremendous waste of valuable government resources to train graduates for jobs that just aren’t there at the end of the training period.

The latest figures show that fewer than one in five Primary Trainees (16.6%) had a permanent post – either full-time or part-time, in the September after becoming fully qualified.

Meanwhile the University Intake Targets for Initial Teacher Training (ITE) for 2024-25 published by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) – asked the universities to recruit 4,070 student teachers next year, 1,734 primary and 2,336 secondary school teachers. These are the same targets as in 2023-24.

The government stated in a letter to the SFC, which recommended that the targets remain unchanged for 2024-25,

“The model is based on a number of inputs including projections about the number of pupils in the education system at primary and secondary ages, churn in teacher numbers (recruitment, maternity, returners etc) and the retention rates of ITE students.”

Secondary school teacher recruitment

Whilst Primary teacher education courses usually hit or exceed their targets, recruitment for the most popular route into secondary teaching in Scotland – the Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE), is much more problematic.

In 2023-24 the TES reports that just half the secondary PGDE places were filled.

Recruitment varies from subject to subject. This year, for example, just a third of the maths PGDE places were filled, 83 out of 250 places. This has huge implications for schools finding the best-qualified teachers for their pupils. It impacts on the take up of maths courses beyond 16 and ultimately will have a wider economic impact on the national economy in future years.

The government stated that the Strategic Board for Teacher Education is looking at “a range of issues, including recruitment into hard to fill subjects, increasing diversity in the teaching profession and promoting teaching as a valued career.”

The teaching bursary scheme

The teaching bursary scheme in Scotland provides bursaries of £20k to incentivise career changers in hard-to-fill secondary subjects including maths, physics, technical education, computer science, chemistry, home economics and Gaelic. This scheme was introduced by the now First Minister John Swinney in 2017. Typically, there are 150 bursaries available each year. In 2024-25 the maths target alone is to train 250 teachers.

Teach First – a possible solution?

During a Scottish Labour debate on falling teacher numbers, Edinburgh MSP Ben Macpherson noted that the Teach First (TF) programme had “not been discussed in the Parliament for some time”. Macpherson said that the TF programme had been “highly successful elsewhere in the UK” He asked the question, ‘’Perhaps now is the time to look at it again?’’

Teach First is a charity that fast tracks good graduates (2:1 or above) into challenging schools in England. It works on a situate learning model, minimal initial training followed by a period of on-the-job mentoring by experienced staff.

Macpherson sees the potential of the TF scheme given the difficulties the government faces in recruiting staff in certain secondary areas. The TF programme then offers all recruits a two-year initial contract in partner schools. Participants in the programme are directed to schools that need their subject expertise. At the end of the two-year contract participants may be offered a permanent contract at their school.

Teach First have offered their work to Scotland previously. In 2017 the charity had talks about working in Scotland but after months of controversy, pulled out.

Professor Marjorie McMahon, last year’s outgoing Deans of Education chair, said that any similar attempts in the future would be fended off. She stated that Scotland’s university-based teacher education was “one of our strengths’’. She predicted that any attempt to introduce a fast-track training solution in Scotland would “fend it off at Hadrian’s Wall”.

These views are all well and good but try running them by parents whose children are not being taught by degree-educated maths or physics teachers. Would they object so strongly to graduates in their children’s schools who were there via the Teach First programme rather than the more traditional PGDE route? Can Scotland’s much-valued education system continue to dismiss proven programmes that would bring good graduates into its classrooms as it clings to an entry route to secondary teaching that is being rejected by many suitably qualified graduates?

Teacher recruitment is one of the big challenges facing the present Scottish Government. It should not dismiss possible solutions in an offhand manner. A strength of a good school is to look at what others are doing in similar circumstances and copy good practice, no matter where it comes from.