News Story

Underemployed primary teachers could be moved to help tackle the shortage of additional support needs (ASN) staff, the Education Secretary has said.

Mairi McAllan said she wanted to make it easier for teachers to switch between roles.

However, she told Holyrood’s Education and Gaelic Committee she is “not in the business of compelling anybody” to leave their job.

Ms McAllan said Scotland, along with other countries around the world, had seen a growth in children requiring additional support at school.

She told MSPs: “Every teacher will undergo ASN training in their initial teacher training. We are now looking to bolster that with additional continuing professional development, essentially to support the workforce.

“We also need to see more additional support teachers in our school that’s something that I am really keen to work on in teacher workforce planning.

“I talked in my statement about, quite bluntly, we have a cohort of primary qualified primary school teachers who are suffering underemployment just now, and I don’t have nearly enough additional support needs teachers in our secondary schools.

“So I should like to try and work on progression for those individuals who choose to, I should stress, to do that.”

Pressed by SNP MSP George Adam on how the Government would encourage more educators to become ASN teachers, Ms McAllan said she did not want to force teachers to move into different roles.

But she said she would seek to make it “as straightforward as is possible” for teachers to transfer from one part of the profession to another, including through continued training and “upskilling”.