HUNDREDS of new places on teacher training courses will be created to address crippling classroom shortages.

Education Secretary John Swinney has announced the number will increase by 371 at the start of the next academic year, to a total of 3,861.

It comes after a number of councils have complained of teacher shortages, with concerns the current registration process for teachers who have been working outside Scotland is lengthy and inflexible.

The full extent of the teacher shortage was laid bare last year when it emerged there were 730 unfilled vacancies across 27 of Scotland’s 32 council areas.

In 2015, seven local authorities called for a national taskforce to halt shortages including Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Moray, the Highlands and the Western Isles.

There have been particular concerns over shortages of specialist teachers in key subjects such as mathematics, physics and computing with Scottish Government targets for training places not being filled.

Last week the Government launched a new teacher recruitment campaign aiming to attract more teachers to key science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects.

Now the Scottish Government has set aside more than £3 million to increase the number of overall trainee teacher posts.

Announcing the new teacher training posts, Mr Swinney said: "We know our student teacher targets are stretching, which is why we are supporting universities to meet them through our new teacher recruitment campaign and £1 million from the Scottish Attainment Fund to develop new routes into the profession."

"I recognise that some councils have faced challenges with teacher recruitment. Today's announcement is a further demonstration of the action this Government is taking to help them attract more people into teaching and widen the pool of available talent."

The new posts were welcomed by teaching unions but they called for teaching salaries to be increased to help attract candidates.

EIS General Secretary Larry Flanagan, said: "Teacher recruitment continues to be a challenge across the whole of Scotland and this announcement is a welcome step by the Scottish Government to help tackle this issue.

"Teaching is a highly rewarding career, which offers graduates the chance to have a positive and lasting impact on the future prospects of Scotland’s young people.

"For teaching to remain an attractive career choice, however, the fall in the real value of teacher salaries needs to be addressed to ensure that well qualified graduates choose education as their career field.”

In a move that underlines the prevailing recruitment crisis, retired teachers will be identified from General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) registers and urged to return to the classroom on a part-time basis.

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.

The first step will be to target the 800 or so individuals whose registration has lapsed in the past year to find out where they have gone and whether they could be persuaded back into the profession.

Further moves have also been made to relax tough entry requirements for teaching staff from the rest of the UK which will allow those who have a proven track record in the classroom to be registered here without necessarily having a teaching qualification.

Scottish Conservative shadow education secretary Liz Smith said: “This will be welcome news for Scotland’s teaching profession which has had to bear the full brunt of the SNP’s successive cuts to teacher numbers since 2007.

"The key test is not only the provision of more teacher training places but an improvement in the employment rates for newly qualified teachers.

“Scotland cannot afford to lose its talented pool of teacher trainees nor can it allow the SNP to fail again in its workforce planning.”

Labour education spokesman Iain Gray said: "This is a welcome announcement but it doesn't begin to address the consequences of the SNP's decade of underfunding education.

"Schools are still struggling to deal with the problems John Swinney created with his own cuts when he was in charge of Scotland's public spending."