Teacher vacancies in Aberdeen have fallen by almost half since March.
The Press and Journal can reveal that vacancies have dropped from a record high of 137 four months ago to 75 at the moment.
Aberdeen City Council’s head of education, Helen Shanks, attributed the fall to the Aberdeen-led Dlite teacher training programme, which focuses on harnessing the talents of homegrown students.
She said: “We’re delighted we have brought the numbers down, but they still have not fallen far enough.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work with probationers to encourage them to stay with a very good induction programme.”
Ms Shanks confirmed generous benefits had also helped attract recruits.
She said: “We’re attracting more people into Aberdeen now the house prices are not so high and we are also offering support with housing.
“We have £5,000 golden hellos where people get £3,000 when they start and another £2,000 after three years.
“This is not just a handout, but to help people establish themselves, since it can be difficult to come up here and put roots down.”
Ms Shanks said the success of the Dlite scheme in Aberdeen had led to it being rolled out across the northern councils and potentially further afield.
Aberdeen City Council vice-convener of education Lesley Dunbar, Labour, called on Education Secretary John Swinney to put funding in to double the size of the Dlite scheme, which brings in about 10 new teachers in one year.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman responded that £88m had been invested to enable councils to recruit enough teachers in the last year alone.
She said: “Although teacher recruitment is a matter for local authorities, we recognise some areas have faced challenges filling vacancies which is why we have taken decisive action to recruit and retain teachers.
“We are also investing an additional £3 million to train an extra 371 teachers in 2017/18 and we have supported 12 oil and gas workers to become STEM (science, technology, engineering or maths) teachers in the Aberdeen area as part of our £12 million Transition Training Fund.
“We recognise difficulties in recruiting headteachers in some parts of the country and we are investing £525,000 this year to support a further 175 participants on the new Into Headship qualification for aspiring headteachers.”
Meanwhile, Aberdeenshire Council’s education director Maria Walker revealed the council currently has 44 teacher vacancies and also credited Dlite for bringing numbers down.
She said: “When we began to experience real teacher recruitment difficulties four years ago, we realised we had to be creative about our recruitment practices.”
A Highland Council spokeswoman said there were currently 31 vacancies being advertised.
She added: “We have recruited more than 100 primary teachers across Highland who will be taking up post in August.”
Moray Council did not respond to requests for comment.
