More than half of places on secondary teacher education courses should go next year and primary places should be reduced by 13 per cent, according to the Scottish government’s annual teacher workforce planning exercise.
The statistical model used to inform the number of places available on initial teacher education (ITE) courses every year is recommending that in 2025-26 - across undergraduate and postgraduate courses - there are 1,500 places on primary courses and 1,150 on secondary courses.
This represents a significant reduction on 2024-25 ITE targets, of 1,734 for primary and 2,336 for secondary.
The cuts have been proposed in response to the number of qualified primary teachers struggling to find work.
In 2024, just 13 per cent of primary probationers secured a permanent post the September after becoming fully qualified.
Teachers unable to get permanent jobs
The campaign group Scottish Teachers for Permanence has been calling for teacher-education targets to be cut to address the “huge backlog” of teachers “who can’t get permanent jobs”.
Now puts a figure on the primary teacher surplus.
It estimates that “since 2016-17 around 1,000 primary teachers have completed probation but not been able to secure subsequent employment because of job availability”, with most of the surplus accumulated since 2019-20.
The oversupply, according to the paper, which was published last Thursday, has been driven by the government’s promise to recruit an additional 3,500 teachers over the course of the 2021-26 Parliament.
This, it says, led to artificially high ITE recruitment targets for universities, which were initially “mostly absorbed by an increase in teacher numbers”.
However, “in the past two years primary teacher numbers have dropped, meaning that there have been substantially more new teachers trained than have been employed”.
The figures were discussed in October at a , which includes representatives from universities, councils, schools and government.
The minutes of the meeting show there were calls for clarity over how the government would deliver its promise to reduce class-contact time by 90 minutes a week if ITE targets were reduced.
There were also warnings at the meeting that the financial situation for universities was “very challenging and the proposed target reductions may lead to staff reductions and could undermine the place of ITE in those institutions”.
Ultimately, it was agreed the group would recommend “that overall primary targets are reduced by 5 per cent in 2025-26 and 10 per cent in 2026-27”.
For secondary postgraduate courses, “the advice will be to consider an option of reducing the target from 2,000 to 1,500”.
For many years recruitment on to the most popular route into secondary teaching, the one-year PGDE, has fallen well short of target.
Again, new data for 2024-25 reflects this, with . Primary PGDE targets, meanwhile, were either met or exceeded in 2024-25, while primary undergraduate courses were slightly under target by 6 per cent.
The target for secondary PGDE courses in 2024-25 was 2,000 teachers, but just 1,062 places were filled.
Few subjects hit target
The worst-affected subjects were maths (target of 250, but only 75 recruited); computing (target of 52, 16 recruited); physics (target of 131, 42 recruited); and design and technology (target of 81, 26 recruited).
The only subjects to hit their targets were history, PE and drama.
The Teacher Workforce Planning Advisory Group warned that uneven recruitment to secondary PGDE meant “the curriculum offer to pupils could be skewed”.
Last week the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association warned that shortages in certain subjects were leading to primary teachers increasingly filling gaps in secondary schools.
A Scottish government spokesperson said it was “resolutely committed to reducing teacher class contact, which is why we are providing local authorities £186.5 million to support the employment of teachers, alongside an additional £29 million in 2025-26 in local and national programmes to support the recruitment and retention of the [additional support needs] workforce.”
This funding was “provided on the clear agreement that meaningful progress is made to reduce teacher class contact”, which requires councils to maintain teacher numbers at 2023 levels.
The spokesperson added: “While local authorities are responsible for the recruitment and deployment of teachers under the 1980 Education Act, ministers have been clear about protecting funding for teacher numbers [and] particularly mindful of some of the challenges in classrooms post-pandemic.”
For 2025-26, the government had recommended to the Scottish Funding Council “a reduction in intakes to primary programmes, in recognition of the challenges primary [teachers] are having in securing permanent contracts”.
The Scottish Funding Council said it expected to receive final confirmation of ITE targets from the government in the next fortnight.
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