Applications to Scottish postgraduate teacher education courses have fallen by 27 per cent compared with last year and have almost halved since they peaked in 2021, new official figures show.
University admissions service Ucas said that by the January deadline, 10,150 applications had been made to study teaching in Scotland this year, compared with 13,960 in 2022 and 19,500 in 2021.
In 2019 - before the Covid pandemic hit - there were 14,620 applications to postgraduate teacher education courses by the January deadline.
EIS teaching union general secretary Andrea Bradley said the figures should be “a red flag” for the Scottish government, and warned that Scotland could soon be “grossly short” of the number of teachers needed to deliver high-quality teaching and learning.
Ms Bradley called on the government to settle the teachers’ pay claim to make the job more attractive - and to bring it in line with other professions.
Teacher training numbers ‘hit by unfavourable pay’
Scottish teachers are seeking a 10 per cent pay rise this year and have been taking strike action since November, but no new offer has been tabled by the Scottish government and councils.
Ms Bradley also said the government needed to address teacher workload and the fact that “swathes” of new teachers were finding themselves on temporary contracts.
“It’s a no-brainer that the comparatively unfavourable rates of teacher pay - when you sit teaching alongside other professions - are making graduates vote with their feet and go where they are being paid better. That’s one reason that would explain this very worrying set of figures,” she said.
“The second reason is precarity - the fact that swathes of post-probationer teachers are limping from one temporary contract to another, despite the fact that, in the midst of Covid recovery, we are crying out for additional teachers.”
Ms Bradley added: “Some of these teachers have been quite vocal on social media about the impact of that employment status and the serious financial pressures they are under, so word gets around.
“On top of that, there is the perennial problem of teacher workload. That has not been brought under control.”
A Scottish government spokesperson said that applications for teacher training could continue right up to the summer as long as places remain available
The spokesperson added: “The Scottish government will continue to work with universities to monitor applications to all initial teacher education programmes.
“Typically, we have seen teacher training applicants increase by around 17 per cent by the end of the cycle.”
In December Tes Scotland revealed that just 60 per cent of places on the one-year PGDE postgraduate course - the most popular route into secondary teaching - were filled in the current academic year.
We also revealed earlier this year that just one in five newly qualified primary teachers was in a permanent job in the September after completing their probation, while only half of new secondary staff had stable employment.
Recently the Scottish government has come under increasing pressure over teacher numbers, given that councils are threatening to cut teacher jobs in order to balance their budgets.
On Tuesday the education secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, confirmed that councils that cut teacher jobs will lose funding.
The Scottish government has promised to recruit an extra 3,500 teachers over the course of the current Parliament, but last year’s census revealed teacher numbers had actually fallen for the first time in Scotland since 2016.
