The current employment crisis in teaching is having a massive detrimental impact on Scottish pupils, teachers and people’s mental health. Schools are short staffed and crying out for extra teachers, teachers are unemployed and crying out for work.
The education system in Scotland is going to continue to decline unless something is done about it and employing teachers on a permanent basis, who want to work, who want to make a difference and who want nothing more than to teach would be an excellent start, reducing class sizes, increasing the amount of support learners are receiving in class.
I personally want to do no other job than teach, but the insecurity, the impact it’s having on the future plans of my young family, I’m unsure how long I can go on like this before I am going to have to seek permanent, secure employment elsewhere. Scotland are losing excellent teachers by the day because of this to other jobs and other countries. It’s diabolical really.
This is answer 11 of the 269 written answers that teachers let us quote anonymously in the Scottish Teacher Employment Survey 2026. It answers the survey’s last question: what do the people who make decisions about teacher employment need to know?
We have corrected spelling, added paragraph breaks and removed details that could identify anyone. Words in square brackets are ours.