Unions warn of schools 'crisis'

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Scottish teaching unions have warned of a growing crisis due to the lack of applicants for senior posts.

The Headteachers' Association of Scotland (HAS) and the Association of Headteachers and Deputes Scotland (AHDS) said action was urgently needed.

It comes as figures show a headteacher is paid up to £102,000 in England, compared with £75,000 in Scotland.

However, the Scottish Executive insisted the situation was not a "significant problem".

In a joint statement, the unions said: "Unless there are meaningful financial incentives for teachers to take the step into leadership roles and for deputes to take on a headship, efforts to address other issues will have little impact.

Failure to address these issues will result in a shortage of school leaders in years to come Unions' statement

"While there is a well-structured and progressive national basic salary scale for teachers, salary levels of promoted staff vary widely, dependent on a number of factors, in particular management structures, teaching time, free school meals entitlement and the use of the job evaluation toolkit.

"This has resulted in some glaring anomalies, with, in some cases, the differences in salaries paid for similar jobs varying by many thousands of pounds."

The unions also highlighted the problem of the number of headteachers retiring, pointing out that almost half of present post-holders would retire within the next 10 years.

They said one new headteacher would have to be appointed every working day for the next 10 years to maintain the present position.

Job applications

"Failure to address these issues will result in a shortage of school leaders in years to come and a diminution in quality while we are told that effective leadership is the key to successful schools," the statement said.

A recent survey by the AHDS, which represents those in primary schools, found that there was an average of 5.4 applicants for every senior teaching post compared with 40 applicants 10 years ago.

The unions called for an urgent review.

But a spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive said: "We don't recognise this as being a significant problem.

There is no crisis in leadership in Scotland's schools and it is simply untrue that there is a shortage of headteachers Cosla spokesman

"Our teacher workforce planning tells us how many headteachers we will need in the future and we're confident the system will produce those.

"We're putting more emphasis on leadership than ever before."

Local government body Cosla also branded the claims "scaremongering".

A spokesman said: "There is no crisis in leadership in Scotland's schools and it is simply untrue that there is a shortage of headteachers.

"There is a workforce planning process in place to ensure that there are sufficient teachers entering the profession and unprecedented investment in leadership to develop the headteachers we will need."