Stressed-out primary teachers are shunning promotion in Scotland’s schools, but not in Fife the council has claimed.
While headteacher jobs lie unfilled in schools elsewhere in the country, Fife has become a “magnet authority” for applicants seeking management roles.
But Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, has expressed concern that there are still too few people willing to lead local schools and has blamed bureaucracy and stress rather than a lack of ambition.
David Farmer of the EIS Fife branch was speaking after it emerged that vacant headteacher posts in several of the region’s primary schools saw just one person make it on to a shortlist for interview.
“Obviously that is a concern for us,” he said. “We don’t know the reason for it but anecdotally stress is probably a factor.
“The normal career pathway for a teacher who wanted to get promoted to headteacher in the primary sector doesn’t seem so attractive now.
“We are aware that stress levels and levels of bureaucracy have increased substantially.”
Mr Farmer expressed specific concern about joint headships, where a headteacher is responsible for more than one school.
“We suspect the council is creating these posts as one way of sorting out some of the issues it is facing,” he said.
“It seems to be an ad hoc arrangement to facilitate the running of our schools.”
Kevin Funnell, education and children’s services team manager with Fife Council, said the authority had received a very large number of applicants for depute headteacher posts recently and that the most recent headteacher post attracted 18 applicants.
“Our leadership programmes for promoted posts in our schools are nationally regarded,” he said.
“The quality of education in Fife as measured by school inspection is significantly above the national standard.
“These are just two of the reasons why we have been able to attract high quality candidates from across Scotland to Fife, despite the national shortage.”
Fife’s director of children’s services, Craig Munro, added: “There has been a difficulty across the country in relation to recruitment to headteacher posts and Fife is no different.
“There are many authorities who have vacant posts in a number of schools.
“We don’t have that problem. We have managed to appoint.”
Mr Munro acknowledged it had been difficult to get large numbers of applications for headteacher posts over the last few years but gave an assurance that Fife would never shortlist someone they did not think was fit to be a headteacher.