Teachers' career hopes 'dashed'

The education minister says she has a "firm grip" on new teacher staffing Teacher vacancies in rural areas

Head teachers have told the government that moves to help hundreds of newly qualified teachers who are unable to find work are not good enough.

They said the new measures announced last month were ineffectual and teachers who were led to believe they would get jobs had been misled.

But the education secretary said the government had taken a "firm grip" of the issue of teacher staffing.

Fiona Hyslop said the key challenge was to fill permanent primary positions.

She added: "The issue is what happens when teachers finish their probationary year.

"Over 70% of secondary teachers achieve permanent employment. We need to make sure that the teaching jobs are where the children are.

"The biggest challenge is for primary permanent positions, but there are also part-time positions.

"Many primary teachers are women who have children and want to work part-time but the challenge we have is to make sure that the resources that the government has put in are used when there are falling rolls, to employ permanent primary teachers."

Put off

The outgoing president of School Leaders Scotland, Brian Cooklin, said: "The figures show that only 25% of last year's probationers have got permanent jobs. This is a tremendous loss to the profession.

"The danger is that we turn them off the profession. Quite a number of them are mature entrants who were attracted by the publicity.

"People felt they were going into a profession that offered a future and a future career and at the very beginning of their career that hope has been dashed.

"The worry about all this is that it is bad enough for those that find themselves in that position - but those who are considering entering the profession may well be put off by what they have seen happening to people in the last year or two."

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