Overseas teachers targeted to fill school vacancies

Retired teachers and trainees from overseas are to be targeted in a campaign to tackle classroom shortages in Scotland.

Trainee teachers from Canada, Australia and Northern Ireland will be encouraged to apply to work in Scotland.

Retired teachers who remain on the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) register will be asked to return part-time.

There were more than 500 teacher vacancies in Scotland in August 2016.

A previous freedom of information request by the Liberal Democrats showed there were 254 primary teacher vacancies and 287 for secondary schools at the beginning of the 2016-2017 academic year.

The area with the highest vacancy rate was Aberdeen with 86 vacancies. This was followed by the Borders at 47.

Moves have already been made to ease entry requirements for teaching staff from the rest of the UK to come and work in Scotland.

As part of the campaign, the GTCS is carrying out research into teachers on the register who are not currently in the classroom to address shortages in schools

'Spread the net'

Ken Muir, chief executive of the GTCS, said there were about 73,000 people on the teaching register, but only 55,000 of them were currently teaching.

"There's a large number of 17,000 who are not teaching for one reason or another and we are looking at how can we encourage these people to come back," he said.

"All of these measures and initiatives are designed to try and get teachers into the classroom as quickly as possible to address some of the shortages we have been experiencing.

"We are looking at spreading the net as widely as possible to find out where teachers who were trained in Scotland, but are no longer working here, are and whether we can get them back working in Scottish schools."

The Scottish government will reveal its own teacher recruitment campaign on Wednesday and Deputy First Minister John Swinney has praised the GTCS campaign.

He said: "The measures being explored by GTCS will tap into new and existing pools of talent, broaden routes into the profession and speed up the process whilst, crucially, maintaining our high standard of teaching.

"The Scottish government is working closely with GTC Scotland and universities to develop new ways to attract people into the profession, supported with £1m from our Attainment Scotland Fund.

"This is on top of the £88m we are investing this year alone to recruit and retain teachers across the country, including our new recruitment campaign which will launch next week."