Teaching profession - diversity: annual data report - March 2021

1. Introduction

The Teaching in a Diverse Scotland report^[1] was published in November 2018. The report was commissioned by the Strategic Board for Teacher Education (SBTE) following the publication of the National Race Equality Framework for Scotland^[2]. This report was written by a working group chaired by Professor Rowena Arshad CBE with the aim to increase the number of teachers from under-represented groups at all levels in Scottish schools. The working group was expanded and reconvened, with Professor Arshad as chair, from June 2019 to March 2021 to support the implementation of the recommendations made in the report.

At the time of the original report's publication, 1.4% of the teaching workforce came from a minority ethnic background. The Scottish Government supported the recommendations of the report which set the ambitious aim that by 2030 the number of minority ethnic teachers in Scotland's schools should be at least 4%^[3], which is at a par with the Scottish minority ethnic population as per the 2011 census (Table 5.5).

To achieve the target of at least 4% of minority ethnic teachers in Scotland's schools by 2030, would mean we need to recruit approximately an additional 200 minority ethnic teachers into the workforce every year from August 2022 to August 2030 inclusive. These teachers would be in addition to the number of minority ethnic teachers currently being recruited annually^[4]. The figures discussed in the opening section of this paper will need to be reviewed with the publication of the 2022 census.

At the conclusion of the Diversity in the Teaching Profession working group in March 2021, Professor Arshad published a report setting out the progress achieved to date and the actions still to be progressed^[5]. In this report, Professor Arshad stressed the importance of gathering and sharing data relating to the diversity of the teaching profession in order to inform and evaluate future work. This new annual publication aims to do just that, by bringing together available data relating to the diversity of the teaching profession in Scotland.

In this first iteration of the publication, two data sets are included. In section 4, a series of data tables are included relating to the ethnicity of entrants to, and qualifiers from, Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes in Scottish Universities. These tables have been drawn from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) student data.

In section 5, a series of data tables are included relating the ethnicity of teachers working in schools in Scottish local authorities which have been drawn from the annual Teacher Census^[6]. The ethnicity of Scotland's population by local authority is also included in this section.

Future iterations of this report will include additional data sets relating to the ethnicity of the education workforce in Scotland. For example, stakeholders have suggested that it would be helpful to include data relating to the ethnicity of applicants to ITE programmes, supply teachers, teachers in temporary contracts and teachers who successfully complete their probation year.