In 2021, the SNP manifesto included a pledge to add 3,500 teachers to Scotland's workforce by 2026. Every year since that commitment, the number of teachers has fallen - by a total of 873 between 2021 and 2024 - and there is little evidence to suggest that the trend will reverse when a new school census report comes out in a few weeks.
With such a stark difference between the government's promise and the reality, the public discussion around Scotland's teaching workforce has changed significantly. In the Spring of 2024, First Minister John Swinney - only a few days into the post - baulked when pressed to stand by the government's 2021 pledge. Instead, more recent official language has been about "restoring teacher numbers" to their 2023 levels, a target that would still sit well below the number of teachers at the time of the government's pledge.
As local authorities grapple with tight budgets, and pupil numbers are projected to fall consistently over the coming years, even that lowered bar looks like a stretch.
So two questions remain about a core education commitment as the Scottish Government heads into a crucial election season: what can the government do about teacher numbers, but perhaps more importantly, what should it do?
The SNP commitment to teacher numbers dates back to well before the 2021 pledge. In 2007, they promised to "maintain teacher numbers in the face of falling school rolls" as part of a bid to reduce class sizes, and this promise was renewed or refreshed in various forms in successive manifestos.
The Scottish Government backed its most recent commitment to increasing teacher numbers with a special £145.5 million fund, which has been provided since 2021. The fund was split amongst councils, and at least in the 2023/2024 budget year, £45.5m of it was made conditional on each local authority either maintaining or increasing its numbers from the previous year.
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Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth made waves in late 2023 when she stated that she would be willing to claw back funding from councils where numbers fell. This was put to the test almost immediately: the 2023 census numbers showed that overall national levels had fallen, and multiple local authorities reported a decline in the number of teachers.
Ultimately, Ms Gilruth wrote to councils saying that withholding money at such a late stage in the financial year would not be in pupils' best interest. Instead, the letters showed that, in the future, the 2023 levels would serve as the benchmark that councils were expected to maintain.
During this time, Glasgow City Council put teacher numbers directly in the spotlight by passing a highly controversial-and now scrapped-budget plan to cut 450 teaching posts over three years. This proposal came even as the city stood to receive the largest share of the previously conditional funding for that year: £5.15m.
The most recent December 2024 school census data showed yet another drop in teacher numbers, resulting in a total loss of 973 posts from 54,285 in 2021 to 53,412 in 2024.
In response, the Scottish Government and Cosla, the group that represents local authorities, announced a joint commitment to "restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels" over the next year. That statement was issued in December 2024.
Census data is due again in the next few weeks, and although no local authority has taken as brazen an approach as Glasgow once did, many are already showing cracks in their ability to meet this shared commitment.
Even with the dangling carrot of extra funding, multiple local authorities are beginning to make noise that maintaining teacher numbers is becoming increasingly difficult.
In many areas, councils have been making cuts for years, but education services tended to be protected. That protection has mostly dissolved, as officials run out of other options for trimming the fat.
Within the education silo, teachers account for a significant share of expenses.
Compounding the problem is a national decline in pupil numbers, a trend hitting some areas harder than others.
Most recently, North Ayrshire Council launched a survey asking the public about a series of cost-saving measures being mooted ahead of the 2026/2027 budget. One of them: reducing teaching positions by 1% (14 teachers) each year in the next two years.
North Ayrshire's pupil-teacher ratio is currently 12.4 - one of the lowest on record in the area and below the national average of 13.3. A decade ago, it was 13.7.
Pupil numbers have been falling and are projected to drop further, while the number of teachers has declined each year since 2021, from a high of 1,462 FTE to 1,373 today.
The council has said that it could make the reductions without any compulsory redundancies. It is currently working to close a £12.5m budget gap.
Earlier this year, The Herald asked every local authority if they intended to keep the promise to restore teacher numbers to their 2023 levels. Some of the bigger councils were quick to say yes. Many others responded much more cautiously.
Perth and Kinross said it was "committed to the principle [of maintaining 2023 levels] bearing in mind the challenges involved in achieving this".
West Dunbartonshire Council said they would "minimise cuts within education"; Moray Council referenced an earlier recognition from the government that "there are circumstances in which teacher numbers cannot be maintained"; while North Ayrshire at the time indicated that the council would "take careful consideration into all factors before confirming teacher numbers for 2025/26".
The policy of pushing for local authorities to add more teachers will face the final test of this parliament in a few days' time, when the Scottish Government publishes its latest round of school statistics.
Although there is no way to know what the data will say, the government can be relatively certain that any potential increase will be well short of 4,000.
Amidst ongoing wider discussions about how well Scottish education is functioning - the attainment gap remains stubbornly unclosed, sweeping reform agendas remain unfinished - the question of the teaching workforce becomes part of the bigger conversation.
A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) earlier this year suggested that Scotland should be looking to actively cut, not increase, teacher numbers. With 90,000 fewer pupils projected in the education system by 2040, the IFS argued that Scotland should allow teacher numbers to fall alongside enrolment, potentially freeing up £500m per year.
The suggestion was loudly dismissed by the Scottish Government and, even less surprisingly, teaching unions at the time.
The response was understandable on many levels. From a purely political perspective, cutting teachers is a very shaky platform. One only needs to look at the backlash to Glasgow's proposals - which began with public outrage and escalated to strike ballots and potential legal action, before ultimately contributing to the resignation of a senior official months later - to see that it is a tough sell to the public, no matter the reasoning.
From a more practical perspective, the size and structure of the teaching workforce are key components to addressing various issues. It goes without saying that teachers might show up as FTE on a spreadsheet, but the professionals themselves are far from interchangeable. Even a relatively painless approach to reducing numbers by letting vacant posts go unfilled requires serious logistical gymnastics by schools and local authorities to ensure that existing gaps in STEM, additional support needs, and other specialist staff are not made worse, and that children are not left to live with the consequences.
And yet, the constant talk around education at Holyrood is that there needs to be more money going around. Universities need more money to preserve jobs and break their reliance on international tuition, schools need more money to meet their obligations to staff and pupils, colleges need more money to stay in business.
Conversations about cuts always start with talk of pain-free solutions, capturing positions rather than laying people off and letting staffing levels fall "naturally" in line with enrollment. They do not always end this way in reality. Pain is inevitably part of the equation.
Still, in this context, £500m a year by 2040-or even some fraction of that-is nothing to shake a stick at.
And after three years of declining teacher numbers, despite £145.5m spent annually to sustain them, the question is no longer whether scrutiny is justified, but whether the money could do more good for young people if spent elsewhere.