Portfolio Question Time – in the Scottish Parliament at 2:00 pm on 19 September 2024.
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to encourage teacher retention during the current academic year. (S6O-03736)
The enhanced pay deal that was agreed last week ensures that Scotland’s classroom teachers will continue to be the best paid in the United Kingdom, thereby helping to support teacher retention and ensuring that children and young people’s education will not be disrupted. Despite a challenging fiscal position, we have been able to support the deal this year with an additional £29 million being made available to allow for that improved offer, in recognition of the hard work that teachers put into supporting our pupils across Scotland. Ultimately, local authorities have statutory obligations in respect of education and should ensure that they employ the right number of teachers to meet local requirements.
Teachers in Glasgow are currently voting on industrial action in response to the Scottish National Party city council’s decision to cut 450 teaching posts over three years, a move that the Educational Institute of Scotland has described as “damaging and dangerous”. That comes as newly qualified teachers in the Glasgow region struggle to get jobs. Does the cabinet secretary accept that the SNP’s underfunding of councils and failure to support the teaching profession will have an irreversible impact on pupils in Glasgow?
I thank the member for her interest in that matter. It is important to say that any legal challenge will be a matter for the council.
Fundamentally, my view is that we do not want teacher numbers to reduce in Glasgow or anywhere else in the country. That is why we are making available £145.5 million to councils to maintain teacher numbers this year; Glasgow has been offered funding of £16.5 million for this financial year to maintain teacher numbers, which is its share of the funding that I spoke of. In 2024-25, Glasgow City Council will receive more than £1.6 billion to fund local services, which equates to an extra £74.9 million to support vital day-to-day services, or an additional 14.9 per cent compared with 2023-24.
I do not accept the second part of the member’s question. However, I do recognise the challenge, and she, too, will recognise that there is an on-going legal challenge that I cannot comment on.
As cabinet secretary, I am very much focused on protecting the funding, because protecting teacher numbers is really important in improving outcomes for our children and young people.
Stuart McMillan has a brief supplementary question.
The recruitment and retention of teachers are a matter for local authorities, as Annie Wells and the Tories know. How is the Scottish Government investing in the education system to empower local authorities in that regard?
Stuart McMillan is correct. Fundamentally, councils are responsible for making sure that they have the right numbers of staff in place to meet local needs. However, as I have mentioned, we are supporting councils to ensure that Scotland continues to have the most teachers per pupil and the highest-paid classroom teachers in the United Kingdom.
We have provided record funding of more than £14 billion to local councils this year alone—a real-terms increase of 2.5 per cent compared with the previous year. That includes the £145.5 million that has been ring fenced to protect teacher numbers and £242 million to support the previous teachers’ pay deals. As I set out in my answer to Annie Wells, we have also made available £29 million during this financial year to support the teachers’ pay deal.
I have set out the investment that this Government is putting into maintaining teacher numbers at the current time. I would like to go further, and I look forward to hearing the budget proposals from the Conservatives to support that additionality.
It is in your manifesto.
I hear the member heckling from a sedentary position but, if he wants me to put in extra funding to support extra teacher numbers—as, of course, the new Labour Government has committed to doing elsewhere—he will have to identify where in the Scottish Government budget that additionality should come from. [ Interruption .]
Excuse me, members—could we please not have all this chuntering? Let us make some progress.