Newly qualified teachers’ prospects of finding permanent work following their probation period have plummeted in the past seven years, The Herald can exclusively reveal.

For those qualifying as primary school teachers, official data reveals a more than 70% fall in the chances of being in permanent employment in their first year. The decline has been less severe in secondary schools, where permanent employment levels for new teachers have fallen by twenty percent since 2016/17.

Almost all council areas have recorded dramatic declines in the number of post-probation teachers securing permanent contracts, with the figure falling to zero in some local authorities.

Campaigners say the data shows "the beginning of a system completely crumbling" and called on the Scottish Government to "uphold their promises to teachers".

As part of the official school education statistics for Scotland, information is gathered on the employment prospects of each annual cohort of newly-qualified teachers – also known as ‘post-induction scheme teachers’ or simply ‘post-probationers’.

The main publication provides overall data on the numbers in permanent and temporary employment, breaking these figures down by full-time or part-time work. It reveals that the numbers of post-probation teachers securing full-time permanent contracts has fallen significantly in recent years, from 57% for the 2016/17 cohort to just 29% for those who qualified in 2022/23.

Over the same period, the number of post-probationers recorded as ‘other’ more than doubled, jumping from twelve percent in 2016/17 to 29 percent for 2022/23. This category includes those teaching in private schools or on a supply basis, but also refers to those who are unemployed or who have left the profession entirely. These figures combine primary and secondary teachers rather than breaking down the information for each sector.

However, more detailed statistics are also gathered by the government, providing more information about employment prospects for newly qualified teachers across the country.

These figures, which are broken down both by school type and by local authority, reveal the scale of the challenges facing post-probationer teachers in Scotland today.

Amongst primary school teachers, nearly 60% of post-probationers in the 2016/17 cohort secured permanent employment, but for the 2022/23 cohort this figure stands at just 16.6 percent – a fall of more than 70% in less than a decade.

Conversely, the numbers recorded as ‘other’ have increased massively, from 11.6% of the 2016/17 cohort to 38.3% of those qualifying in 2022/23.

Newly qualified secondary school teachers are also less likely to secure permanent work in their post-probation year than was previously the case. Amongst the 2016/17 cohort, 58.7% secured a permanent contract, but this figure has dropped to 47.2% for the 2022/23 cohort – a fall of 20%.

Employment data for each local authority further highlights the situation facing new teachers across Scotland.

At primary school level, almost all council areas have seen major declines in the proportion of post-probation teachers able to secure permanent work.

For the 2016/17 cohort, Aberdeen City Council had the highest rate of permanent employment for post-probation primary teachers at 83%, while the lowest rate was the 25 percent recorded by Na -h-Eileanan Siar. More than half of all councils recorded figures of above 50%.

However, by the time the 2022/23 cohort had qualified, Aberdeen City Council was the only authority in the entire country to record a permanent employment rate for post-probation primary teachers above 50%. The next highest figure was Clackmannanshire at just 44%, and thirteen councils recorded a figure of 10% or lower.

As with the overall figures, the local authority breakdowns demonstrate a less severe decline in employment prospects for newly-qualified secondary teachers. Some areas – such as Aberdeenshire, Inverclyde and Fife - recorded an increase in the number of post-probationers securing permanent contracts, but in authorities including Angus, East Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire the figures fell dramatically.

A spokesperson for campaign group Scottish Teachers for Permanence told The Herald that the issues now being highlighted are "the beginning of a system completely crumbling".

They continued: "Each year, growing numbers of teachers are left on the scrap heap after an arduous and convoluted recruitment process, with councils across the country offering permanent posts to as little as one in ten applicants.

"Scottish Teachers for Permanence is spearheaded by these very teachers. The Scottish Government claims to want to make Scotland the ‘best place to grow up’ but refuses to put the required infrastructure to make this a reality. Local authorities across the country are cutting budgets to fill mammoth deficits, impacting the quality of education for Scottish children. This is simply not good enough. Not for Scottish teachers nor our learners.

"Scottish Teachers for Permanence are calling on the Scottish Government to uphold their promises to teachers and create permanent employment opportunities for qualified teachers, a streamlined recruitment process befitting of the 21st century, and the complete halt to PGDE programmes at university until all the backlog of temporary teachers has been addressed."

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Andrea Bradley, General Secretary of the EIS teaching union, said: "The employment prospects for probationer, newly qualified, and recently qualified teachers across Scotland continues to be an issue of huge concern, and is one that the EIS continues to raise directly with the Cabinet Secretary and has raised with First Ministers past and present over the last few years. Far too many newly and recently qualified teachers experience real difficulty in securing a teaching post in Scotland and, even where they do, too many of these positions are based on insecure, precarious, short-term – often in effect, zero-hours contracts.

"These teachers are highly qualified professionals whose commitment to children and young people, to education and the teaching profession in Scotland, has been demonstrated through the years of study that they have undertaken, often at significant personal sacrifice and expense; through the successful completion of a rigorous probationary year; and through the achievement of an exacting suite of professional standards. And yet, Scottish local authorities, because of budgetary pressures, are increasingly appointing them on short-term, temporary contracts or not at all.

"This not only impacts the professional fulfilment, lives and overall wellbeing of thousands of teachers, to the extent that many are simply leaving teaching in search of stronger job security elsewhere, it falls short of delivering the quality of education that children and young people in Scotland deserve.

"To provide the level of support which children and young people desperately need at this time, we should be expanding the teaching workforce to enable smaller class sizes and the reduction in class contact time, all of which have featured in Scottish Government manifesto promises past and present. Giving teachers on precarious contracts permanency will go some way to delivering on these promises.

"But to make this happen, the Scottish Government must first provide additional core funding to local authorities, as well as looking carefully at teacher workforce planning for the years ahead to ensure stability and sufficiency of teacher staffing for quality education within our schools.

"The recent UK budget will deliver Billions in additional funding for public services in Scotland, and the Scottish Government must commit in its own budget to utilise a sizeable percentage of this additional money to provide enhanced funding for Education. We need to see more teachers in our schools, and better employment opportunities for the thousands of newly and recently qualified teachers who can make a real difference in the lives of Scotland’s young people."

Mike Corbett, NASUWT Scotland National Official, said: “At a time when the recruitment and retention of teachers is becoming more challenging, it is nonsensical that we have an increasing proportion of post-probationary teachers on temporary contracts. Denying new teachers the stability and security they need and deserve to thrive in their workplace and plan for their futures is not going to help encourage new teachers to stay in the profession long-term and is only likely to dissuade more potential recruits from considering teaching as a career.

“This smacks of a short-termist approach to teaching as a profession and to our wider education system more generally, where the main concern is saving money now by hiring new recruits on temporary contracts, rather than investing for the long-term in pay and working conditions likely to help retain skilled teachers in our schools. In the long run, this approach not only costs more public money overall, it robs children and young people of the benefit of the experience and knowledge teachers can only provide once they are fully established in their careers.

"If you add in the fact that some councils are now following the lead of Glasgow and seeking to cut teacher numbers, this makes for an unpleasant cocktail, which severely limits opportunities for new teachers and makes the profession itself look even less attractive to those who might otherwise have considered it."

A Scottish Government spokesperson said:

“While the recruitment and deployment of teachers is the responsibility of local authorities, the Scottish Government is doing everything we can to help maximise the number of teaching jobs available. As part of this, we are providing £145.5 million to local authorities to help protect teacher numbers.

“It is encouraging to note that the number of school teachers in post has increased by 8% since 2014. The number in permanent posts has remained stable at more than 80% over the past 10 years. And since 2018 the number of teachers in Scotland's schools has increased by over 2,000 - thanks to direct investment from the Scottish Government."