Report identifies 'wide disparity' over time student teachers spend on basic skills

The findings come after the quality of initial teacher education at Scottish universities was placed under scrutiny by the Scottish Parliament's education committee.

Student teachers told MSPs last week some of their fellow students were graduating without sufficient skills to teach literacy and numeracy. They also said there was insufficient coverage of issues such as classroom discipline, online safety and helping pupils with autism.

Official figures published last week also showed less than half of Scotland's 13 and 14-year-olds were performing "well" in writing.

The government-commissioned report on initial teacher education said: "Given both literacy and numeracy are of the highest priority, this raises questions of equivalence in student teachers opportunity for learning in these key areas."

The report went on to highlight a relatively low number of hours spent on understanding the use of data, which underpins current classroom practice.

It added: "It is worth noting that the lowest reported dedicated contact hours for data literacy was reported as two hours. This is unexpected given the current emphasis in policy on using data to inform and support pupils learning needs."

John Swinney, the Education Secretary, said he intended to raise the issue with the General Teaching Council for Scotland, which regulates the profession and accredits courses, as well as key officials from the eight universities that offer teacher education.

He said: "It is essential all teacher education programmes are of the highest quality. They must deliver appropriate content for literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing, as well as data literacy and equality, across both the primary and secondary sectors.

“I am very concerned by the wide variations identified in this report, which have also been highlighted in evidence submitted to the education committee on workforce planning."

However, Liz Smith, education spokeswoman for the Scottish Conservative Party, described the analysis as "damning".

She said: "Even the Scottish Government's own studies show student teachers are not receiving enough training on literacy. With literacy rates in our schools plummeting, this is simply not good enough."

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said it was "essential" for all programmes of teacher education to be of good quality.

Earlier, Dr Rowena Arshad, head of Edinburgh University's Moray House School of Education, told Holyrood's education committee she believed students had the necessary skills to teach maths in primary because entry requirements meant they needed to pass a National 5 in the subject.

She said: "That is a level that is far higher than what is required to teach primary school young people. There is I think an issue of numeracy confidence and not necessarily numeracy competence."

Dr Arshad said the university offered student teachers catch-up lessons when they identified weaknesses in their own knowledge, which many found helpful.

And she also stressed that literacy and numeracy were considered an important part of all aspects of teacher education and were not just a focus during dedicated time.

Dr Lesley Reid, director of undergraduate studies at Edinburgh University, said it was important to distinguish between maths knowledge and the ability of students to teach maths to primary pupils.

However, Dr Liz Lakin, a senior lecturer in education from Dundee University, said more needed to be done to improve literacy and numeracy skills among student teachers.

She said: "It's clear that we need to do more and we need to do more collectively. Particularly from a numeracy point of view, we need to look back at the very basics.

"We need to make sure that all the students are able to identify where their weaknesses are, where their misconceptions are, but they might not actually know that until they try to teach somebody else."