Hundreds of primary school children could be left without schools to go to after summer if the teacher recruitment crisis is not solved soon, Aberdeen’s education chief has warned.
Angela Taylor, the local authority’s education convener, said the council could be forced to mothball schools if there are not enough teachers to staff them.
Last month it was revealed that there now 134 empty teaching positions in Aberdeen. This figure has doubled over the last eight months.
Mrs Taylor wrote to Ms Sturgeon in February after the government announced a multi-million pound fund to retrain oil workers as teachers.
But yesterday, she said the recruitment drive had done “precious little” to mitigate the problem and questioned whether ministers were taking the problem seriously.
The Labour councillor said: “This is a national problem but there is no doubt that Aberdeen is a special case because of the high cost of living plus the oil and gas crisis.
“We have evidence that many of those losing their jobs are married to teachers and being forced to move to other parts of the country to look for work.
“The SNP government needs to act decisively and provide a meaningful package of emergency measures which will bring about genuine change.
“If they continue to ignore our pleas for action, there is a danger that after the summer holidays we may have to consider closing those schools worst affected by this crisis.”
Mrs Taylor said she had also written to Education Secretary John Swinney calling for face-to-face crisis talks.
The Educational Institute of Scotland’s Drew Morrice said: “The north-east has suffered because of teacher shortages and there is a growing crisis in Aberdeen which requires a degree of intervention by the Scottish Government to solve.
“You can plan for teachers retiring but if they suddenly resign and go that creates a problem you may not have anticipated.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “We want all schools to have access to the right number of teachers with the right skills so every child in every community has the opportunity to fulfil their potential.
“Last year we invested £51million to safeguard teacher posts and increased student teacher numbers in each of the last five years, specifically targeting places at the University of Aberdeen.
“Through the Transition Training Fund we are committed to helping oil and gas sector staff move to a career in teaching, particularly in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects; and we are supporting the University of Aberdeen’s distance learning teacher education programme, which allows council employees to retrain as teachers while staying in work.
“Mr Swinney will be in Aberdeen on Monday to hear directly from education directors, head teachers and teachers from Aberdeen and other parts of the north of Scotland about the challenges they’re facing and opportunities moving forward.”
