– in the Scottish Parliament at on 11 January 2018.
4. To ask the Scottish Government how many probationer teachers there will be in the academic year 2018-19. (S5O-01637)
The application process for probationer teachers for the academic year 2018-19 is on-going. The total number of applications will be known in March.
Teacher recruitment poses a challenge to many remote and rural areas, including my constituency of Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. Can the cabinet secretary tell me what the Scottish Government is doing to ensure that trainee teachers are allocated to those areas during their probation period and what guidance and training are given to the schools to ensure that they are equipped to train them?
The Government continues to provide £37 million to support the teacher induction scheme, which includes funding for mentoring and support for all probationer teachers on the scheme. That includes funding for preference waiver payments. Students who take up that option are prioritised for allocation to remote and rural authorities, such as those in Ms Ross’s constituency, during their probationary year and benefit from an additional payment of up to £8,000.
Through our education reforms, we will take steps to ensure that initial teacher education prepares students to enter the profession with consistently well-developed skills to teach key areas such as literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing, and to provide the support to schools to ensure that the training and induction experience is of value to individual candidates.
In the data that was published just before Christmas, the number of post-probationer teachers in employment reached 88 per cent, which is the highest level on record, as a consequence of the Government’s actions.
The cabinet secretary mentioned at the Education and Skills Committee meeting on 20 December 2017 that, although there was an improvement in probationary applications, there was a lower than expected retention rate of qualified teachers. Official statistics show that around 4,000 teachers who had been registered at the beginning of 2017 were not registered at the end of the year. Can the cabinet secretary tell us what percentage of those were teachers leaving the profession and what percentage were retirements?
I cannot give Mr Mundell that figure just now, but I am happy to confirm it to him in writing. It is welcome that we have seen an increase of 543 in teacher numbers in our classrooms in this academic year. That is a tremendous boost to the delivery of education in our classrooms, and the Government is committed to working with our initial teacher education providers to make sure that we continue that good progress in the years to come.