There’s a report on this by the Scottish Government but it will be full of uncritical complacency about the damaging effects of Indyref2 on teacher recruitment so I’m going to use this more reliable BBC Scotland website report.
It’s headlined:
Scottish teacher training numbers increase
Nice, accurate, restrained and professional just like Reporting Scotland will be later today but wait, what is this?
About 85% of the places available in secondary teacher training this year were taken up compared with 70% in 2017
The number of people in teacher training in Scotland has gone up for the third year running, according to new figures.
There are nearly 4,000 new student teachers in Scotland this year.
The Scottish government also said the number of vacancies being advertised for more than three months had fallen sharply.
The latest Scottish government figures show the number of posts in secondary schools advertised for more than three months fell from 229 last year to 148 this year.
Despite the drop, that figure is still significantly higher than in 2016, when only 75 posts remained unfilled for more than three months.
The number of pre-school and primary vacancies advertised for three months dropped from 136 to 49
The number of pre-school and primary vacancies advertised for more than three months also dropped – from 136 last year to 49 this year. Again, the figure was still higher than the 33 recorded in 2016.
The Scottish government statistics also show:
- Student teacher intake increased for three years in a row, reaching 3,902 in 2018 compared to 3,376 in 2015-16
- Growth in teacher numbers across all STEM subjects (Science, Technical, Engineering and Mathematics)
- Student primary teacher intake rose to 2,082 and exceeded targets for 2018
- 1,494 student teachers will start at secondary level, up from 1,226 in 2017
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46501068
This won’t do at all! Where’s that Herald piece on depression and anxiety amongst teachers? It’s not reliable? WGAF! Get me it now.
Talking-up Scotland 
On the Jaikie Show tonight, the figures for trainees WAS announced. Then, instead of the usual “but” was a “however”. The “however” was utilised in the same manner as a “but”, so maintained the negative vibe they normally generate.
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Gavin is right – the programme highlighted the fact that the target for recruitment had not been met. The ‘target’ becomes a surrogate – it has not been met, ergo, recruitment has failed.
They have, however, moved on to selective use of statistics in the test results for reading and mathematics for P7 children, which shows that those children in the lower SIMD groups AS A COHORT has a greater percentage than the higher SIMD groups in reaching the targets. As Mr Robertson has pointed out this fails to recognise that most of the children in the SIMD group HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL. The terminally boring and unhelpful Iain Gray describes this as ‘total failure’.
Of course the attainment gap is unacceptable, but the SG is putting lots of money into dealing with the issue. I read today of a major programme at Glasgow University School of Education into developing strategies to overcome the gap. The problem is multi-factorial and requires a range of strategies. That, surely, is worth an article rather than Liz Smith and Iain Gray saying the SG is shite.
Presumably, some in BBC Scotland ar Glasgow University alumni and would have received the same paper as I did and could then do a GOogle search to get more information.
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Sorry, para 2, line 2, ‘higher’ should be ‘lower’ (Serves me right for writing complex sentences!)
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