A NEW recruitment campaign aims to attract some of the brightest young science and mathematics undergraduates into the teaching profession.
The Scottish Government is launching an advertising campaign to target students completing university science, technology, engineering and maths courses (STEM).
The move, which will also seek to attract talent from within industry, aims to tackle the current crisis in teacher shortages with 730 unfilled vacancies across 27 of Scotland’s 32 council areas last summer.
There have been particular concerns over shortages of specialist teachers in STEM subjects with Scottish Government targets for training places not being filled.
Last week, the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Learned Societies’ Group on STEM suggested bursaries of up to £30,000 could be offered to attract graduates into teaching.
However, the Scottish Government has invested in an advertising campaign which it hopes will lure suitable candidates by highlighting the rewards of passing on their expertise to a new generation of pupils.
The “Teaching Makes People” campaign will include billboard advertisements at major railway stations throughout Scotland as well as targeted campaigns at university recruitment fairs.
John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister and Education Secretary, said: “The Teaching Makes People campaign targets university undergraduates studying science, technology, engineering and maths subjects as well as people currently working in STEM industries.
“The campaign is based on research showing people attracted by and suited to teaching are generally motivated by helping to develop others and making the most of their own knowledge.
“It builds on the success of our campaign last year which saw a 19 per cent increase in applications for education postgraduate diplomas at Scottish universities compared to the previous year.”
Mr Swinney, who will launch the campaign at a careers fair at Glasgow University, said teaching was often overlooked as a career choice by the 20,000 or so STEM undergraduates who qualify from Scottish universities each year. He added: “This campaign seeks to change this by targeting undergraduates and having a strong presence at careers events and on campuses across the country.
“This activity will be backed up by social media, online and radio advertising, and billboard adverts in specific locations.”
Ken Muir, chief executive of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) said there was no “silver bullet” to deal with shortfalls, but attracting people to change career and enticing teachers back from lucrative overseas posts was key.
Mr Muir said: “This campaign is a good stepping stone towards trying to resolve the problem, but I don’t think any one thing will resolve teacher shortages.
“All the organisations need to try and come together to make sure that teaching in Scotland is seen as a worthwhile and desirable career.
“We need high-quality teachers in front of children in Scotland if we are going to tackle some of the Government policy areas.”
The GTCS has already unveiled a global campaign to hire hundreds of extra teachers to address the the classroom shortages.
Trainee teachers in Australia, Canada, Ireland and Northern Ireland - countries where they are in surplus - will be invited to apply for positions in Scotland while homegrown talent that has emigrated to lucrative tax-free jobs in Gulf States such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia will be enticed home when their contracts expire.
And in a move that underlines the prevailing recruitment crisis, retired teachers will be identified from (GTCS) registers and urged to return to the classroom on a part-time basis.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel