Council communications regarding plans to increase teacher numbers: FOI release

Information requested

On 10 December, the Scottish Government sent a letter to councils regarding plans to increase teacher numbers. At the bottom of the letter the following paragraphs were included:

"We will contact you again shortly to begin more detailed discussions on the practicalities of delivering the commitments outlined in this letter. To help us understand local issues better, if there has been a reduction in teacher numbers between 2023 and 2024 in your Council area (see Figure 7 in the published statistics), could you please provide an explanation as to the key factors behind those reductions.

Please provide these to stuart.robb@gov.scot by Monday 6th January. If you have already submitted information regarding mitigating circumstances, please confirm that this information is still current."

As this deadline has now passed, I would like you to release to me all communication between the Scottish Government and councils regarding this request for information. This will obviously include emails providing the information asked for, but would also include extended email chain, attached documents, Teams chats, personal notes etc.

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under section s.38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA apply to that information.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party (staff names and contact details) and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

With regard to your enquiry, you may wish to note that the purpose of this request was to gather evidence to enable both local authorities and the Scottish Government to better understand the challenges experienced locally.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202500448748 - Information released - Annex

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