Moray Council’s education chief is ready to go back to the classroom to make sure a staffing crisis does not close any of the region’s secondary schools.
Laurence Findlay admitted the local authority’s teachers shortage was keeping him awake at night – and insisted sending pupils home would be a “last resort”.
He said he was at a loss about how to address current recruitment difficulties which have left the council with about 70 teaching vacancies in its 53 schools.
Mr Findlay spoke exclusively to the Press and Journal as councillors met to discuss the crisis and Deputy First Minister John Swinney demanded local authorities maintain teacher numbers in return to Scottish Government cash.
Mr Swinney was immediately accused of starting a “turf war” between the SNP administration at Holyrood and councils across the country.
Asked if the teacher staffing crisis was keeping him awake at night, Mr Findlay said: “Yes it is, this is a very serious issue.”
The former principal teacher of modern languages at Keith Grammar added: “While we have 70 vacancies across our primary and secondary schools, the bigger issue we have is the lack of supply availability.
“I am still a registered teacher, so if it was required I would happily return to the classroom if it would keep a school open.
“Central officers have been deployed into the classroom – that is the stage where things are at.”
Asked how close the council was to sending pupils home because of the staffing crisis, Mr Findlay, the local authority’s corporate director of education and social care, said: “I would say we are pretty close.
“We have a number of schools with high teacher absence which causes some concern about capability to remain open.
“So far we have managed to plug that gap but the critical period will be between now and the end of March because that is when you have all the bugs and illnesses going around.”
Mr Findlay said St Peter’s Primary School in Buckie closed for a day in December due to staff illness and a unit for youngsters with behavioural problems at Elgin High School shut for similar reasons recently.
Buckie High School is experiencing a high number of staff absences with nine people off on Tuesday, and Keith Grammar currently has no English teachers due to sickness.
Mr Findlay said teaching staff across Moray were very committed and he was confident they would rally to provide a good service to pupils.
“I would stress that closing a school is an absolute last resort,” he added.
“We would look to redeploy our central resources first before that happened.
“We place the education of young people very high on the agenda so a closure is not something we would ever take lightly.”
Mr Findlay, a former head teacher at Forres Academy, said he hoped the crisis would be a temporary problem because the Scottish Government had increased the number of trainee teacher places this year and next year.
But he claimed all public bodies must redouble their efforts to promote Moray as a great place to live and work.
Mr Findlay said: “What is becoming harder is moving people away from ‘centralbeltitis’ – the thought that Edinburgh and Glasgow is where it is all happening and nothing happens north of Perth.”
The education chief said the authority must take a long hard look at how to use its resources more efficiently and effectively in the longer term.
There are currently 920 teachers in Moray to educate a total of 12,048 pupils.
The shortages are most acute in key subjects such as English, maths, technical, home economics and physics.
Not all the posts the local authority has advertised are full-time, and some are short-term covers for maternity leave, secondments and job shares, which the council admits are not attractive to supply teachers from outwith the region.
Officials admit that teachers are unlikely to relocate to Moray for part-time, temporary posts, and only full-time, hard-to-fill positions are sweetened by a £5,000 resettlement package.
There were 230 supply primary school teachers and 162 secondary school teachers available to work in October 2012, but that figure dropped to 123 and 103 respectively as of this month.
Mr Findlay said the council’s pool had shrunk in recent years because teachers had secured full-time posts, left the profession or retired.