A baby boom has taken more than 50 teachers out of Dundee classrooms.
City council education director Michael Wood has told members of the education committee that 56 teachers are on maternity leave.
He insisted efforts are being made to attract more staff, with interviews under way last week and this.
The issue was raised by Arthur Forrest, the committee’s Education Institute of Scotland (EIS) representative, who said: ”We have extreme problems in schools trying to get supply and it’s moving towards crisis.
”We’re unable to find teachers to take classes we have Support for Learning teachers being taken from young people to cover classes.
”The motto is ‘get it right for every child’, but how can we when the teachers identified to work with the children are taken away to teach classes?
”Often teachers speak to me and say they’re spending too much time fire-fighting, covering classes.”
The committee was discussing a five-year plan which will guide the work of the education department up to 2017. This envisions ”providing the highest standard of learning and teaching for every learner in every establishment” and maximising their attainment and achievement levels.
Mr Forrest said he was concerned efforts to meet these ambitious aims would be hampered by head teachers and other members of school management teams having to spend so much of their time in the classroom instead.
Mr Wood said interviews were under way to try to fill 20 primary school teaching posts and further advertising for staff was planned.
He told the committee: ”In all of our schools we’re making sure we prioritise so we don’t have a situation where children are disadvantaged due to a teaching issue. In terms of head teachers, their voice is crucial.
”Our head teachers are the key drivers for improvement within our schools. The plan is a five-year plan, it allows us time to adapt and regroup in the light of experience.
”I’m out in schools on occasion doing supply work, as I want to see the schools and how the job is done. The reality is we don’t know what’s happening out in the field unless we get out there. We have people at the pumps.”
The council has had a voluntary early retirement scheme for teaching staff for the past three years as part of its efforts to cut costs.
During the 2011-12 academic year this was offered to all members of staff who would be aged 55 or over by mid-August.
Some 120 teachers expressed interest in going and 60 were made an offer of early retirement, with 55 accepting.
Reductions in the number of experienced teachers have been partly offset by hiring newly-qualified teachers, many of whom completed their probationary year at Dundee schools. This still results in financial savings as they are paid less than teachers nearing the end of their careers.
The newly-adopted education service plan stresses the need to continue with the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence, which will see the introduction of new exams to replace Standard Grades.
Procedures for reviewing how schools are working will also be revised, while there will be added emphasis on using self-evaluation to bring about improvements and extra efforts to ensure pupils engage more in their learning.