Scottish teacher numbers falling – despite promise by SNP

Published on Sunday 21 December 2008 20:47

TEACHER numbers are at their lowest for more than two years, despite government promises to maintain staffing levels.

Scotland's biggest teaching union, the EIS, has revealed new statistics showing the figure for the third quarter fell by 900 to 56,800, as low as it has been since three years ago, when it was 56,500. Last year, the figure for the same period was 57,700, while in 2006, it was 57,100.

Teachers warned yesterday that pupils would suffer if councils continued to cut staff to make savings. Ronnie Smith, the general secretary of the EIS, said the new school curriculum could be under threat.

The government statistics follow a recent survey by the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), the teaching reg-ulator, which revealed thousands of newly qualified teachers had been unable to find jobs.

Newly qualified teachers are guaranteed a year's work, but many find themselves without a job after this period. The GTCS survey revealed only 770 out of 3,426 probationary teachers last year had found permanent positions in the profession.

Last month, the number of unemployed teachers hit a three-year high, according to the Office for National Statistics. The sharpest rise was over the past year, when the figure rose by more than 50 per cent.

The number of Scottish teachers claiming Jobseeker's Allowance has soared from 155 in 2005 to 400.

The EIS leader demanded that the Scottish Government start policing and punishing councils that cut teacher numbers against the principles of the concordat funding deal.

Mr Smith said: "It's time the Scottish Government acknowledged that local authorities are simply failing to deliver on the promise to maintain teacher numbers in the face of falling school rolls and thereby to cut class sizes.

"The full-time equivalent number of teachers in Scotland is now at its lowest level since the third quarter of 2005.

"If we are cutting teacher numbers, that will increase workloads and put pressure on the profession at a time when we are supposed to be undergoing major curricular reform.

"Teachers are increasingly frustrated by the growing gap between the promises made by politicians and the reality of what is happening in our schools. It is time for the Scottish Government to act."

Fiona Hyslop, the education secretary, has already promised larger "golden hellos" – rising from 6,000 to 8,000 – to attract applicants to hard-to-fill posts. And teachers nearing retirement will be allowed to work shorter weeks in order to free up jobs for new teachers.

Those measures were recommended by the Teacher Employment Working Group, a task force set up in June with teacher, council and government representatives.

An estimated 6,000 teachers are expected to retire each year, but many are reported to be staying on longer because of the recession, exacerbating the job shortage.

Ken Macintosh, Labour's schools spokesman, said: "Almost two years on, the SNP promises have been exposed for what they were – a complete con on the electorate.

"These figures show quite a dramatic fall, coming on the back of the GTCS survey, which shows high numbers of unemployed probationers. The education secretary previously promised an extra 9 million for teachers but now, when the situation is far worse, there is no money.

"She is being complacent, evading her responsibility, half denying there is a problem and half blaming local authorities, when it is the government which is responsible for providing funding to local authorities for teacher employment.

"The government's answer is to lower teacher expectations that they will get a job, which is just ridiculous.

"The concordat is something to hide behind rather than a mechanism to address the funding problem. We should reconstitute a new working group until this problem is sorted."

Ann Ballinger, the president of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association, warned that children would be the innocent victims.

She said: "It is damaging the education of pupils who need additional support and affecting the education of everyone else.

"In class sizes of 33, everyone is suffering because there is so much time being taken up by those who need extra support."

Last June, Ms Hyslop pledged 25 million to employ 300 extra teachers last autumn and train a further 250 for the future.

She told the Scottish Parliament at the time that this would allow councils to begin reducing class sizes in primaries 1-3 in line with the SNP's pledge. No timescale has ever been announced for this target to be met.

As well as the 550 new teachers, Ms Hyslop promised a "significant increase" in the number of students being trained as teachers on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the next few years.

Teacher concerns about a lack of funding and time to implement the new curriculum have already forced the government to delay it by a year.

A Scottish Government spokesman said the teachers' claims were misleading and based on inaccurate figures. He said: "The public sector employment estimates are estimates of the number of teachers on the payroll – including those on maternity leave and supply cover – and so do not reflect the numbers actually in the classroom at any given point.

"Overall, the number of people employed in education is 93,300 – compared to 92,600 when this Scottish Government came into office."

He said the Teacher Census, expected in March, would paint a more accurate picture.

The Scottish Government had, he said, provided record funding of 34.9 billion – a 13.1 per cent increase over the three-year spending review period. And the share of the Scottish Government's budget for local government services had increased year on year from a previously declining position inherited from the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition.

He highlighted the extra funds for 550 new staff in 2007-8 and added: "Through the historic concordat with local government, councils have sufficient funding to maintain teacher numbers at 2007 levels in the face of falling school rolls, with some 20,000 expected to enter training by 2011."

Councils are using 'bullying' tactics in effort to cut sick leave, claims union leader

TEACHERS have slammed bureaucratic and unhelpful "silly" ideas to combat council staff sickies.

The Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association (SSTA) says repeated calls to check if workers still have cancer carried the "implication that every employee who is ill may be malingering".

Councils, however, defended the measures and accused the teachers of living in "cloud cuckoo land".

A joint statement from Murray MacFarlane, president of the Society of Personnel Directors in Scotland, and Joe Di Paola, head of the employers function at COSLA, dismissed the claims.

They said: "Managing absence from work and people's ability to fulfil the terms of their employment is part of the normal performance management arrangements of any organisation.

"Our procedures are robust but fair and the SSTA are living in cloud cuckoo land if they are advocating that councils sit back and do nothing.

"Councils take all absences from any sector of their workforce extremely seriously. We have a duty to our workforce and a duty to the public pound."

Jim Docherty, SSTA acting general secretary, highlighted practices such as insisting on meetings between employees and managers where the manager had contributed to the employee's stress-related condition in the first place.

He also criticised "one size fits all policies" with no regard for employee medical conditions, and threats to discipline teachers before disciplinary procedures were followed. Mr Docherty said: "We face unhelpful procedures which epitomise everything which is wrong with the current bureaucratic approach to personnel issues.

"Among the silliest ideas are the instructions given to employees who have provided medical certificates relating to serious long-term illnesses, requiring the employees to report to a senior manager by telephone every week.

"Effectively employees are being instructed to report 'my leg is still broken' or 'my treatment for cancer is continuing'."

He criticised a trend towards the "slavish" use of trigger points.

He said: "Employees are being warned they face disciplinary action simply because their absences have reached a certain level.

"They are being subject to disciplinary action simply because they have had a stroke or a heart attack. There are existing, more sympathetic procedures in place in such cases."

He said the techniques were effectively a form of bullying employees into attending work while sick.

Graduate twins' career dreams hit by reality

TWINS Cara and Lynn McAllister from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, shared a drive to join the teaching profession.

Both 25-year-olds graduated in 2006 – Lynn as a secondary PE teacher from Strathclyde University and Cara as a primary teacher from Glasgow.

Each found a year's placement – something guaranteed to all probationary teachers. But after passing their trainee year and becoming fully registered teachers, a job was no longer guaranteed and both found themselves facing unemployment.

Cara's probationary year school was able to keep her on for another year on temporary three-month contracts. But when the school broke up for summer this year, the work dried up and she has only worked six days supply since.

Lynn was not so fortunate, and, when her probationary year ended, was forced to find work with an educational charity rather than fulfill her dream of teaching PE.

Cara said: "I feel my life is on hold. I'm 25, still living at home with no job. I can't get a mortgage and I'm just waiting for someone to get pregnant or ill so I can work.

"There were lots of mature students on my course who have families and mortgages – how are they coping without work?

"The main problem is the universities are training too many people and there aren't enough jobs to go round. And they are still training too many so it is going to get worse.

"When I see these adverts saying teaching is a great job, which it is, it makes me angry. I would urge people not to go on to a postgraduate course thinking they have a stable job to look forward to."

SNP struggles to fulfil its key pledges on education

SEVERAL of the SNP's key election promises last year focused on education.

Most are now in jeopardy because of the concordat funding deal with local authorities, which allowed the government to deliver its vow of a national council tax freeze.

Some of those education pledges are teetering on the edge of failure, with many senior figures in education privately predicting a collapse of the concordat.

The deal gave councils a lump sum of money – which they could allocate – replacing the previous system of ring-fencing cash for specific areas.

The result is cash-strapped councils using money for other pressing issues, rather than spending it on schools.

Some councils are asserting they cannot afford to pay more teachers and are in fact cutting back. Already, some have announced redundancies and have cut spending.

Glasgow City Council has said 78 teachers will have to go, blaming falling rolls as a contributory factor.

The local authority has identified 22 million of savings, but still has 3m to find.

Similarly, Aberdeen City Council needs to find 25m of cuts to fill a financial black hole, but it has so far said teachers' jobs will not be cut.

The result of falling teacher numbers is a domino effect on the government's other election promises.

Fewer teachers, particularly at nursery, throws the pledge of "access" to a nursery teacher for every child into doubt.

In some cases, this can mean a visiting nursery teacher moving around several schools, rather than actually taking a class full-time.

Teachers' unions have also warned falling numbers mean the government's smaller class sizes target, of 18 for primaries one to three, will not be met.

They have argued this is because the measure needs more teachers to implement it.

In many cases, it also requires new schools to be built to accommodate large classes being split into two.

However, any school building work has been delayed by the government's rejection of PPP schemes and confusion over its Scottish Futures Trust alternative.