MINISTERS WERE under pressure last night to guarantee that hundreds of newly-qualified teachers are given jobs in Scottish schools, writes Steve Bargeton, political editor.

Education secretary Fiona Hyslop is expected to announce plans today for education, including teaching jobs and class sizes.

The Scottish Tories warned that newly-qualified teachers face an uncertain future due to the shortage of jobs available to them.

Education spokesman Murdo Fraser said that in many cases these were people who had been attracted by government promises and who had given up careers to retrain as teachers and who now find themselves potentially on the scrap heap.

“I know probationary teachers who are now facing unemployment or, at best, an uncertain future,” he said.

“Such is the extent of the shortage of places that some are even talking about having to return to their previous professions, having sacrificed a great deal to go and retrain.

“Scottish Conservatives want to see more vocational training and schools being given greater freedom over budgets as a way of allowing them to employ more teachers if they wish to.”

Labour education spokesman Hugh Henry, education minister in the previous Executive, pointed out that the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition had given local authorities extra money to create almost 1000 additional posts specifically for newly qualified teachers.

“We know teachers will be needed over the next few years as we cut class sizes and more teachers retire,” he said.

“Newly-qualified teachers have demonstrated their value and are helping to transform Scottish education. We don’t want to lose them.

“Workforce planning is not an exact science, but every effort should be made to retain these staff in our schools.

“Scottish Labour is calling on Fiona Hyslop to find the money to keep every new teacher in Scottish education.

“We know the money is there.

“Jack McConnell promised all the extra money from Gordon Brown’s budget to education if Labour won the last election.

“He promised to invest in education even if it meant squeezing other budgets.”

Mr Henry said he would have preferred the money allocated to scrapping graduate endowments to be spent on recruiting new teachers.

“But if not, then the money should be found elsewhere,” he said.

“This should be a key priority for the new education secretary.”