Aberdeen’s teacher vacancy crisis may continue until 2020, new documents have revealed.
Teacher vacancies in the Granite City hit a record high of 137 last month, up from 86 when a crisis summit on the issue was held in January last year.
Now Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has uncovered Scottish Government documents showing plans to fill teacher vacancies in Scotland are being planned for over a three-year period.
The document states: “This teacher vacancy information has been built in to the statistical modelling process with a view to attempting to address all primary vacancies in one year and using a phased approach over three years for secondary.”
Speaking at First Minister’s Questions, Ms Dugdale said: “A decade of SNP government has resulted in a teacher recruitment crisis in Aberdeen and across Grampian.
“I can reveal today the government’s own internal documents admit it could take up to three years to fill those vacancies.
“Three years for the government to ensure that there are enough teachers to educate our children, three years to clean up the mess that the SNP has been making for the past 10, three years to give our young people a fair chance in life.
“If the SNP had been focused on the day job rather than campaigning for independence, our schools would have the resources and support they need and our children the bright future that they deserve.”
But Ms Sturgeon insisted education remained her number one priority.
She said: “John Swinney and I, and this government, have never shied away from the fact that Scotland – like many countries right now – has an issue with teacher recruitment.
“That is one of the reasons why we have increased the intake to teacher training to train more teachers to work in our schools and close the attainment gap.
“Kezia Dugdale might not want to listen to this, but that is why in 2017-18 we are making resources available to train an additional 371 teachers, and it is why the General Teaching Council for Scotland has a number of initiatives under way to encourage people back into teaching and to encourage new people into teaching.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said new teachers had to be phased in and vacancies would be filled meantime with teachers who were already qualified.
She said: “This is a method of staggering the new intake of teachers so we don’t have them all coming in one flash.
“We need to make sure new teachers starting in the classroom are adequately supported when they come into post.
“In terms of upping the numbers it’s not just as if we would get teachers just from training – there is a whole range of people already qualified who we want to return as well and we held a recruitment event in Aberdeen in February.”
