CUTS to the number of teachers trained in Scotland “probably went too far”, according to ministers.
John Swinney, the Education Secretary, said with hindsight the target intake for student teachers should not have been reduced as much as it was in 2011.
The admission came as the Scottish Parliament’s education committee took evidence from Mr Swinney on the current difficulties facing schools.
There are currently significant shortages of supply staff and schools in rural areas are struggling to recruit classroom teachers.
There are also shortages of secondary teachers in key subject areas including science and computing.
Ten years ago Scotland was suffering from an over-supply of teachers and many newly-qualified staff couldn’t get jobs.
As a result numbers coming through teacher training were cut from 3,857 in 2009/10 to just 2,307 in 2010/11.
Mr Swinney told MSPs that at the time of the decision there was a high level of teacher unemployment.
He said: “The model was re-calibrated to take into account the fact teachers couldn’t get employment at that time and our desire was to make sure that teachers could get employment.
“Obviously there has been quite a variation in the intake levels, but they have been affected by the surplus of teachers being able to secure employment.”
Asked by Labour MSP Daniel Johnson if there had been an over-correction, the Education Secretary conceded: “I think clearly with the benefit of hindsight the intake numbers in 2011 were probably over-corrected too far, but judgments were made at that time based on the level of teacher unemployment.”
Mr Swinney said he believed there were a number of factors which had led to the current shortages, including workload.
He said: “I would suspect we had a greater number of teachers leaving the profession because of some of the issues around workload which I have now acted to address”.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Government said thousands more people are considering a career in teaching as a result of its latest recruitment campaign.
The Teaching Makes People campaign was launched by Mr Swinney in February targeting undergraduates studying science, technology, engineering and maths as well as people currently working in associated industries.
Teacher training universities said earlier in may that the campaign had attracted interest, but no additional entries to Stem teaching degrees.
However, the government said there had been more than 42,000 unique visitors to the campaign website and more than 2,600 had registered for updates about applying for a postgraduate teacher education course.
More than a third of undergraduates surveyed, after seeing the campaign, said thought teaching was their ideal career with almost 60 per cent actively considering going into the profession.
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