Council Leader looks forward to Education Summit

28 September 2015

Aberdeen City Council Leader Jenny Laing is looking forward to welcoming Cabinet Secretary Angela Constance MSP to a major education summit being held in Aberdeen tomorrow (Wed 30 Sep).

The North Scotland – Raising Attainment: Securing Teachers Summit is being led by Aberdeen City Council, and has the full support of Aberdeenshire, Moray, Highland, Western Isles, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands councils.

The event is being held to address the rising teacher vacancy levels in the North and North-east of Scotland.

The aim of the summit will be to understand the root causes underlying the current challenges and identify solutions at a national and local level to support the region at a time of unprecedented low numbers of applicants and increased pupil numbers.

Aberdeen City Council Leader Councillor Jenny Laing said: "I am pleased that Angela Constance, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, will attend the Education Summit tomorrow (Wed 30 Sept) so she can hear first-hand from the seven local authorities here in the North and North-east of Scotland about the major issues facing us when recruiting teachers.

"Here in Aberdeen, despite our continued attempts to recruit teaching staff by using a range of approaches such as incentives, assistance with accommodation, wider advertising campaigns and recruiting from a broader range of potential applicants, we have been unable to meet the target teacher numbers set by the Scottish Government.

"We want the Cabinet Minister to sit round the table with us to develop constructive proposals to resolve this teacher recruitment crisis."

The summit is being held at Aberdeen Beach Ballroom from 10.30am until 1.30pm.

The summit was originally due to be held on Wednesday 7 October but was changed to accommodate the attendance of key education officials from local government, national government and national agencies.