I know how difficult it is to be a teacher. So I’m not surprised that some parts of Scotland are finding it hard to recruit teaching staff. I was a volunteer teacher in Cameroon, West Africa, back in the 1970s. My headmaster, Mr Mfonyam, told me on my first day: “Just do as they did at Aberdeen Grammar, your old school.” And I was left to get on with it – class 3B for English and the sixth year for economics.
I probably did a dreadful job but the boys were bright and now they are likely to be heads of government departments, army colonels, rich businessmen or headmasters themselves. So I guess all that lesson preparation, all that performance in class, all that marking and setting of mock exams was worth it. The curriculum for excellence it certainly wasn’t but it made me realise what a skilled and time-consuming job school teaching is.
So when Moray Council says it has 70 teaching vacancies – and pupils may have to be sent home – I’m not surprised. Neighbouring Aberdeenshire has 57 vacancies in its secondary schools. Aberdeen city council is having to recruit teachers from Ireland and offer incentives to its non-teaching staff to go back to college to obtain a teaching qualification. Overall, the number of Scottish teachers is at a 10 year low, at 50,824. And this is at a time when pupil numbers are rising again and many teachers are retiring, either because of their age or because of the increased pressure put upon them by the new curriculum and the new exams.
The SNP government is naturally embarrassed at this state of affairs – 4,200 teachers fewer than when they came into office in 2007. So the Deputy First Minister John Swinney has sought to blame the 32 local authorities. And in his budget, pushed through parliament with the SNP’s majority this week, he threatened to withhold £51m from local councils unless they promised to spend the money on teacher recruitment.
The Scottish Government suffered another embarrassment this week, with the publication of the latest NHS waiting-time figures. They showed that only 91 per cent of patients in Accident and Emergency departments were treated within four hours, well under the target of 95 per cent. The Health Secretary Shona Robison said hospitals had been under “unprecedented pressures” this winter, due to more people turning up at hospitals rather than at their GP’s practice and because of the difficulty in finding nursing home places for patients waiting to be discharged.
And there was yet more embarrassment for the Government when it emerged that the police are continuing to carry out “stop and search” operations on children under the age of 12, despite promising to end the practice last summer. That prompted the First Minister the Rt Hon Nicola Sturgeon to tell MSPs at First Minister’s Questions that she and the Chief Constable were minded to stop all “voluntary” stop-and search operations in the near future.
None of these setbacks – in schools, hospitals or policing – have anything to do with the UK general election, at least directly. But indirectly, they are at the very core of the arguments. Because they all come down to money, and how much “austerity” the people are prepared to put up with – an issue not unknown across the whole of Europe.
The Scottish Labour Party is struggling with the dilemma of criticising the SNP for not doing enough to safeguard big spending departments like education or the health service but, on the other hand, promising to “deal” with the national debt without putting up taxes. Instead, curiously, Labour is reverting to the constitutional issue, with Gordon Brown and Jim Murphy promising to go beyond the “vow” on more devolution for Scotland. On Monday, they suggested that a UK Labour government would not only implement the Smith Commission powers within 100 days, it would also give the Scottish Parliament the power to top-up welfare benefits, such as state pensions, unemployment benefit and child benefit.
It seems Labour wants to appear more Scottish than the SNP in an effort to catch up on the SNP’s 20 per cent lead in the opinion polls. There was another shocker for Labour this week in Lord Ashcroft’s poll of 16 constituencies where there was a high Yes vote in the referendum. It found that in all but one, the SNP can expect to win in the general election on 7 May. Jim Murphy was left putting a brave face on for the cameras and suggesting that, as polling day drew nearer, people would realise that the only way to keep the Tories out of office at Westminster was to vote Labour.
For me, one of the startling images of this week was an artist’s impression of Shell’s giant Brent oil platform being lifted out of the North Sea on the arms of a floating dock-ship. Shell is consulting on its plan to decommission its heroic Brent platform after 40 years of service. It’s pumped out nearly 10 per cent of the oil and gas so far produced in the North Sea and added £20bn to the UK Exchequer. Apparently the scrap metal is to be used to make washing machines in Turkey ! Shell will have to come back later for the platform legs, which pose an even bigger problem because of their concrete oil-storage tanks.
It is a dramatic reminder that decommissioning, or what my mother might call “tidying up after yourself”, is often the forgotten part of a job, one that is left for “others” to do. But the oil industry, unlike the nuclear industry, is having to face up to it. No one really knows how much decommissioning will cost, but Oil and Gas UK estimate it will amount to around 10 per cent of the overall cost of production and constitutes a world market of £30 bn over the next ten years. It’s a new industry in itself.
Let’s hope Scotland does not neglect it, as it is neglecting wave and tidal power. But, like school pupils, we are sometimes reluctant to learn our lessons.
And teaching is a difficult trade.
