Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie has called for routes to be opened up to help teachers switch from primary to secondary teaching.
Or to teach additional subjects without requiring them to completely retrain, improving teachers’ job prospects and giving pupils the excellent teachers they need.
The announcement comes as the party today revealed that the number of early career teachers quitting has hit a new high, with 408 leaving the profession last year alone.
A Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request to the General Teaching Council for Scotland has revealed that since 2018:
• 2,081 registrants have permanently left the register, within 5 years of gaining provisional registration.
• The number of recent registrants leaving the register each year has doubled from 183 in 2018 to 408 in 2025.
The party’s manifesto calls for Professional (Additional) Registration to be made available and free to teachers on short-term and zero-hour contracts, qualifying them to teach additional subjects or switch from primary to secondary.
At present, it is only possible for primary teachers to retrain to be secondary teachers if they are already employed by a local authority and their school head recommends them for it. It’s therefore close to the people who need it most.
Mr Rennie said: “It costs a lot of money to train a teacher so to see record numbers quitting almost immediately is bad news.
“There are a host of factors at play here. First and foremost, teaching is not as attractive a career as it once was because the SNP has allowed standards to decline and violence to soar in classrooms.
“There is also a mismatch in the number of teachers being trained, with too many for too few jobs in primary education and not enough in secondary education.
“The SNP once claimed they wanted to be judged on their record on education but they’ve made a real muddle of it.
“They also claimed they wanted to cut class sizes. That promise lasted about five minutes before it was junked.
“Our young people need access to great teachers and a great education if we want them to get ahead in life.
“Scottish Liberal Democrats have a plan to get Scottish education back to its best again.
“Alongside our plans to help teachers retrain, we would make teaching a more attractive career path by bringing back principal teachers for key subjects, boosting in-class support, and giving teachers the authority they need to halt violence in our schools.
“If that sounds like the kind of change you want to see, give us your vote on the peach regional ballot at May’s election.”