Council / ‘Grow your own’ teaching scheme proves a success for SIC
SHETLAND Islands Council has supported four students into full-time teaching placements through its plans to ‘grow its own’ teachers, with the scheme proving to be a success.
A further two people are studying secondary teaching this year, with a one day per week placement at a school, with another seven expressions of interest in moving into teaching in 2026.
The council announced in January 2024 it would look within its existing workforce in a bid to fill a number of vacant teaching jobs.
School staff invited to think about training to become teachers
At a meeting of the full council that month, the council heard there were a lack of teachers in specialist subjects.
Then children’s services director Helen Budge said technical teaching was a “big issue” for the SIC, while home economics has proved a problem too.
She said there were gaps across the whole school estate, and not just in certain schools.
“That is a broader workforce issue for us that we are trying to begin to help fix by asking staff for expressions of interest to train with us to maintain our teachers in our schools,” Budge said.
An update set to come before councillors tomorrow (Monday) shows that four people have been helped into full-time placements after showing an interest in moving into teaching in 2024.
Last year a further two students applied to move into secondary teaching, teaching art and design and English, with their study now continuing before they move into a one day per week placement.
And the SIC said a further seven students – four for primary and three for secondary – had shown an interest in moving into teaching.
“We continue to explore options for grow our own in harder to fill posts and are speaking to university providers about this, consideration also needs to be given to how we widen the grow our own offer beyond children’s services,” the council said.
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