Schools face headteacher shortage as stress grows

• Teaching staff crisis as fewer apply for post as headteacher

• Half existing heads in Scotland set to retire within next five years

• Extra workload, pressure and accountability discouraging applicants

Key quote

"Some of our members are saying openly they are sitting it out to retirement and don't want to go for the top job, because the extra pressures that come with it are not worth the additional money." - GREG DEMPSTER, ASSOCIATION OF HEAD TEACHERS

Story in full A MOUNTING workload is discouraging teachers from applying for top jobs and adding to a recruitment problem.

Education departments in Scotland face a shortage of headteachers for primary and secondary schools, even though the posts can carry salaries of more than 70,000.

Councils said the number of applicants to fill vacancies is dwindling, while up to half the 2,442 existing heads are due to retire within the next five to ten years.

Greg Dempster, the general secretary of the Association of Head Teachers in Scotland, said a recent survey of 20 local authorities revealed an average of 5.4 applications were made for each headteacher vacancy, when three times that number would have been expected previously.

He said: "There has obviously been a dramatic drop in applications while, at the same time due to demographics, there are lots of headteachers going to be retiring in the next few years."

Mr Dempster said many deputy heads are not willing to step up: "Some of our members are saying openly they are sitting it out to retirement and don't want to go for the top job, because the extra pressures that come with it are not worth the additional money."

Bruce Robertson, Highland Council's director of education, culture and sport, saw 20 vacancies for primary heads arise last year, with seven having to be advertised twice, one three times and one four times. Of the six secondary vacancies during 2005, two had to be advertised twice and one three times.

Mr Robertson said: "It's becoming more and more difficult to recruit headteachers. This has manifested itself particularly during 2005."

The council official, who is also vice-president of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, said that over the next eight to ten years more than half of Highland's 29 secondary and 184 primary heads are due to retire - a picture mirrored in other parts of the country.

Mr Robertson believes additional administrative burdens are discouraging potential applicants. He said: "In smaller primary schools, potential applicants are finding the challenges of both teaching and administration are at times impossible."

Highland Council operates a "cluster headship" scheme, where one head is responsible for managing two or three schools in one area. It is also spending 1 million over three years to train potential head candidates, while a national qualification for headship project also aims to recruit more heads.

Fraser Sanderson, Dumfries and Galloway's director of education and community services, expects about 15-20 per cent of the area's 110 primary and 16 secondary heads will be lost through retirement over the next five years. He estimates that the number of headteacher applicants has fallen by half in the last two to three years.

He said: "People are looking at the job and saying, 'I can live happily without that'. It's the workload, pressure, accountability."

A spokeswoman for Edinburgh City Council said it, too, has seen a reduction in applications for headteacher posts and has had to re-advertise jobs more frequently than before.

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said only 0.8 per cent of primary headteacher posts and 0.3 per cent of secondary posts were vacant for more than three months between February 2004 and 2005.

She said: "We carry out detailed workforce analysis every year, so we know how many teachers we need to recruit. While we know there are always headteachers heading towards retirement, we are also always adding new teachers to the system.

"Our figures don't appear to show particular problems with recruitment - in fact vacancy rates are well below the average for most industry."

Pre-school cutbacks 'will harm learning'

SCOTLAND'S councils have been accused of jeopardising the education of under-fives by cutting back on nursery school provision.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country's largest teaching union, said some local authorities were planning to replace qualified nursery teachers with nursery nurses to save money.

It said the move was at odds with the Executive's commitment to improving pre-school education, and called on ministers to intervene.

Ronnie Smith, the general secretary of the EIS, said the plans being considered by some local authorities were "one of the most damaging developments to education in recent years".

Ewan Aitken, the education spokesman for COSLA, the local authority umbrella group, said councils needed "flexibility" to be able to deliver education in their areas as they saw fit.