There are 75 people currently on an Initial Teacher Training (ITE) course in Scotland to become a maths teacher, well short of the 250 2024 target. And this isn’t a one-off, the target hasn’t been met in years, and it’s getting worse.

A graph showing the decline of maths recruits to ITE

75 is the upper limit of new teachers - not all of them will complete the course, pass their placements, or continue teaching after probation. And 75 is a small number. Right now there are 20 maths vacancies in Scotland - and we’re only weeks into the term.

Grow Your Own

One solution is the grow-your-own approach, where primary or non-maths secondary teachers are taken on as “Teacher of BGE” or similar. At its best, these teachers are supported through dual registration, teaching S1-S3 Broad General Education (BGE) mathematics while completing university credits to be able to become a full secondary maths teacher.

But the worry is in many cases non-specialists are simply being used to prop up mathematics departments that just wouldn’t function without them. My biggest worry here is that the mathematics curriculum gets reduced down to the National 3 and National 4 specification. These qualifications have no external exams and are completed in class, and offer poor prospects of progression onto National 5. But giving teachers of BGE some low sets, and a pack of practice National 4 papers, will seem tempting for many schools.

The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) are obviously concerned about this, and wrote to the Directors of Education back in February.

Throw into the mix the recent ballot by EIS, Scotland’s largest teaching union, to cut contact time, and we’re heading for disaster. If teachers have fewer periods, and there’s no new staff to plug the gaps, the obvious casualties will be Higher classes, and cuts to the number of BGE maths classes.

We can’t keep stumbling on like this.

Solutions

I propose two solutions, neither of which I expect to be popular.

Shortage Subject Supplement

Centrally funded cash to pay maths (and other shortage subjects) more money. I don’t think this needs much explanation, the economics is simple. We need to pay people to get them through the door, and pay them more to keep them.

Teach First

I find that in Scotland people seem to have taken against the idea of Teach First. Or more accurately: they’ve taken against what they reckon Teach First is.

I declare an interest here, as I trained through Teach First, so obviously I have a bias.

The training programme was research based, academic, and high quality. You take a bunch of enthusiastic graduates, put them through training, embed them in a school, and then work continuously with them for two years to make them highly effective.

The schools get a supply of teachers - and cheap ones. The trainees get a school mentor, a university mentor, and a Teach First mentor - plenty of support.

As a Head of Department at a school with a low average SIMD I need to say it clearly: We need Teach First.

Leadership

Right now we need political leadership. We can’t just sit tight and hope for the best, or things will continue to decline. Neither of my proposals will be widely welcomed, but what’s the solution I’ve missed?

I named this blog: “Who’s teaching Maths on Monday?” There’s an academic debate to be had about teacher salaries, or the structure of ITE courses in Scotland. But for those of us on the front line the impact is very real and very immediate. Period 1 on Monday, I have 33 students coming into a classroom to learn some maths. Who’s going to teach them?