Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville says the Scottish Government is to spend £50 million to hire hundreds more teachers and pupil support assistants.
The additional funding will be used to recruit 1,000 new teachers and 500 support assistants within the next academic year.
This is in a bid to support the country’s Covid-19 education recovery.
It comes after the SNP pledged to invest a further £1 billion over the course of the parliament in its election manifesto, promising to close the attainment gap and recruit 3,500 more teachers and classroom assistants.
On top of this, a further £65.5m of permanent funding will be allocated each year to councils from the 2022-2023 academic year onwards.
Funding will help education recovery
Ms Somerville said: “Our vision for Covid recovery and our priorities for Scottish education remain unchanged.
“Recruiting more permanent staff will be one of the cornerstones of recovery alongside the health and wellbeing of pupils and staff, intensified support for reducing inequality, and enabling the highest quality of learning and teaching.
“The £50m funding will allow councils to recruit more teachers and pupil support assistants next year.
“Looking further ahead, the additional £65m annual funding delivered as part of the local government settlement will support councils to recruit these additional staff on permanent contracts.”
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More to do to reverse cuts, say Labour
Michael Marra MSP, Scottish Labour’s education spokesman, says this is only the beginning of trying to reverse years of cuts.
He said: “This government must set about undoing their own damage but it comes at a time of unprecedented loss in education.
“The SNP remain in denial about the scale of the challenges schools face if they think this is a silver bullet.
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“This only starts to reverse the SNP’s cuts to education – never mind dealing with the devastation caused by the pandemic.
“School pupils and teachers alike have been let down time and time again throughout this pandemic.
“This must all be entirely new funding and must be accompanied by a real education comeback plan to put a stop to this government’s track record of failure and to give families the support they need.”