THE quality of teacher training courses is to be scrutinised by the Scottish Parliament after concerns over standards of literacy and numeracy.

Holyrood’s education committee has written to all universities who offer teaching degrees asking them to provide details of what they offer.

The move comes after teaching students told MSPs last week some of their fellow students were graduating without sufficient skills to teach maths to P7 pupils.

They also said there was insufficient coverage of issues such as classroom discipline, online safety and helping pupils with autism.

The letter to universities from James Dornan, the committee convener, states: “The committee heard evidence to suggest a variation in the amount of time dedicated to different issues that the committee consider crucial in preparing student teachers for the classroom.

“The committee heard evidence to suggest the requirements for primary school teaching entrants in relation to numeracy may potentially be too low and that this can be combined with limited assessment and focus during teacher training.”

The letter calls on universities to provide precise details of the time spent on numeracy for prospective primary teachers.

Mr Dornan added: “A number of the trainee students suggested that, while there is focus on the importance of literacy and numeracy, there is not necessarily sufficient focus on the practical techniques of how to deliver them.”

The committee has also written to professional watchdog the General Teaching Council for Scotland to highlight “what appears to be a notable variation in the approaches taken by universities” including “some concerning elements such as a lack of training”.

In addition, the committee is concerned that some mature students seeking to move into teacher training from other professions cannot do so because they do not meet the entry requirements for the course even though they are well qualified.

Mark Melrose, who gave evidence to the committee last week, said that despite having spent seven years “purely working with optics” he was not eligible to train as a physics teacher because he did not have a unit on optics in his degree.

Mr Dornan added: “There are also examples in the responses received to the committee’s call for views of teachers from elsewhere being put off moving to Scotland to teach, for example because of the drop in pay to the bottom of the pay scale despite being an experienced teacher.”

In an evidence session with the committee last week one student teacher said only one week of his university course had been given over to literacy while another described a lack of focus on ensuring teachers have the skills to teach numeracy.

Halla Price, who is in her final year of a BEd at Edinburgh University’s Moray House School of Education, said: “There wasn’t enough focus on the teachers themselves having the skills to teach numeracy other than a maths audit we completed ourselves in second year.

“I do not believe that everyone graduating this year has the sufficient skills in numeracy to be able to teach it to 11-year-olds at a reasonable standard.”