Wishart calls for supply teachers to be drafted in

Shetland MSP Beatrice Wishart. 

MSP Beatrice Wishart has urged the government to look into employing supply teachers to ease the pressure on full-time teachers.

Ms Wishart has written to education secretary John Swinney calling for extra supply teachers to be drafted in to provide catch-up support and extra one-on-one learning for pupils.

Teachers were working “flat-out” at the moment, she said, but supply teachers were telling her they had been “consistently underemployed” since the pandemic began.

“The loss of routine, time spent with friends and full access to normal learning has been hard and children have missed out on so much over the past year.

“The evidence I am receiving is that supply teachers have the capacity to help bridge some of that gap, both during the current period of remote learning but also once schools return.”

Ms Wishart said she believed the move could “help dampen the worst impacts of the pandemic on learning.”