Golden hello of £20,000 awaiting new teachers

Professionals will be given a £20,000 golden hello to retrain as teachers in subjects blighted by staff shortages, the deputy first minister has announced.

John Swinney, who is also education secretary, said the bursaries are needed to encourage business and industry figures to swap careers.

The payments, which will be available from 2018-19, are for those training to teach in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), which schools report are facing particularly severe recruitment problems.

Mr Swinney told the conference: “We need to recruit more teachers in these subjects.

“And to do that, we need to reach beyond recent graduates and attract people who have the appropriate subject degree but are working in business or industry.

“These careerchangers still need to go through initial teacher education – we will never compromise on quality – but we can make it easier for them to make that career change.

“We understand that giving up a salary for a year while they do their teacher training is a real barrier for them.”

Iain Gray, for Scottish Labour, said: “Hardly a day goes by now without the SNP U-turning and giving in to Labour demands.

“Scotland’s schools are blighted with a teaching shortage, with 4,000 fewer teachers since the SNP came to power and urgent action is needed.

“We welcome John Swinney adopting one of the policies from our 10-point plan for Scotland’s schools and look forward to him seeing the sense of the other nine too.”