Teaching was too stressful so I left to become a lorry driver

Stuart Youens

Stuart Youens says that when he became a secondary school teacher 20 years ago he loved the job.

But gradually the effect of budget cuts, the reduction in classroom assistants, the increase in additional support needs, and a rise in bureaucracy took its toll.

Two years ago he chose to leave the profession and become a lorry driver – and says he's a lot happier in his new job.

Figures seen by BBC Scotland News suggest that the number of days teachers have been absent because of stress has risen dramatically in the past six years.

Unions and education experts say many teachers are leaving altogether as a result.

The Scottish government says it is taking action to make sure school staff can access the necessary support.

Stuart Youens, 47, from central Scotland, says he taught in a good school but had started feeling dread at the thought of going in to work. He added he needed to get out before he "became bitter".

He says teachers need to be able to cope with stress in the classroom, but that mobile phones, challenging behaviour and pupil disengagement have become a growing problem.

Stuart says the amount of stress outside the classroom has also risen dramatically due to qualifications and increasing amounts of paperwork.

"In my view teaching should be quite a simple job and if you add layers and layers of data collecting and bureaucracy it adds stress," he says.

"It needs to be stripped back so teachers can get on with the job. It is a really satisfying job but we need to be able to get on with it without all these huge levels of bureaucracy."

Stuart Youens says driving is more relaxed than teaching

He says he loves being a lorry driver and does not miss life as a geography teacher, even though it paid better.

"It is difficult to compare lorry driving to teaching, they are completely different professions," he says.

"What I really like about driving is the simplicity. It's just so much more relaxed.

"Don't get me wrong there are stressors in any job and there are stressors in driving a big vehicle, but the folk I work with are great and if there is a problem the mechanics fix it.

"I've got that simplicity back that I felt I should have had in teaching."

There were about 53,000 teachers in Scotland in 2023/24.

Questions about the number of teacher absences due to stress were sent to every Scottish council by Reform Scotland, which describes itself as a non-partisan independent think tank and is chaired by former Labour first minister Lord Jack McConnell.

It received responses to its freedom of information requests from the majority of local authorities, although a number – including Glasgow – did not respond or only provided the average number of teacher days missed.

In the 14 councils which provided data for every year, the total number of days missed by teachers due to stress rose from 30,380 in 2017/18 to 41,629 last year.

In Edinburgh, the number has more than doubled over the same period, from 3,594 to 8,879. Angus is among the other areas to have reported large increases.

Teachers have told the BBC that their jobs are being made more difficult by increasingly difficult classroom behaviour, higher numbers of children with significant support needs, and cuts to classroom assistants, support staff and overall budgets.

Education experts say that having so many experienced teachers being off long-term sick or leaving the profession altogether has a hugely detrimental impact on pupils who will then get ad hoc supply teachers or have to share teachers with other classes.

Alison Payne, research director at Reform Scotland, said it wanted to get a better idea of the impact on teaching after hearing anecdotal reports of rising stress levels.

She said: "While the different recording methods used by the different councils made it difficult to get a Scotland-wide picture, individual council responses were alarming.

Ms Payne said the Scottish government should investigate the issue further.

"While the growing number of teachers badly affected by stress is obviously deeply worrying on a personal level, the increasing number of days lost also represents more disruption to learning for pupils," she added.

"The figures don't give an indication of whether a small number of teachers have been off for long periods, which may be easier to manage in terms of securing cover, or if an increasing number of teachers are of for small amounts of time, which can be more difficult to plan around."

'Making meaningful progress'

Last year the EIS union commissioned research looking at workload and stress. It found that on average, teachers were working more than 11 additional hours a week, unpaid, on top of their contractual hours.

A spokeswoman for the EIS said that "soaring" levels of stress and stress-related illness were a very serious concern.

"The Scottish government and local authorities, as the employers of teachers, must act in line with their duty of care to ensure that the current crippling workload burden on teachers is lightened."

Councillor Joan Griffiths, Edinburgh City Council's education, children and families convener, said she was "saddened" by the absence figures.

"The health and wellbeing of the over 3,000 teachers employed by the council is incredibly important to us," she said.

She said a range of support and resources were available to help, and that teachers who have concerns about their workload or mental health are encouraged to raise this with their line manager.

Angus Council said it recognised the challenges of the teaching profession and had a range of measures in place to support staff affected by stress.

A Scottish government spokesperson said it had allocated more than £2m in recent years to specifically support the wellbeing of the education workforce.

"Scotland continues to have the best-paid teachers and the lowest pupil-teacher ratio in the UK.

"We are also determined to increase teacher numbers in schools. That is why we are providing local authorities £186.5m this year as part of an agreement with Cosla to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels, as well as freezing learning hours and making meaningful progress on reducing class contact time."

The spokesperson added: "Local authorities are responsible for the recruitment and deployment of teachers and headteachers."