Underemployed primary teachers could be moved to help tackle the shortage of additional support needs (ASN) staff, the Education Secretary has said.
Mairi McAllan said she wanted to make it easier for teachers to switch between roles.
However, she told Holyrood’s Education and Gaelic Committee she is “not in the business of compelling anybody” to leave their job.
Ms McAllan said Scotland, along with other countries around the world, had seen a growth in children requiring additional support at school.
She told MSPs: “Every teacher will undergo ASN training in their initial teacher training. We are now looking to bolster that with additional continuing professional development, essentially to support the workforce.
“We also need to see more additional support teachers in our school – that’s something that I am really keen to work on in teacher workforce planning.
“I talked in my statement about, quite bluntly, we have a cohort of primary qualified primary school teachers who are suffering underemployment just now, and I don’t have nearly enough additional support needs teachers in our secondary schools.
“So I should like to try and work on progression for those individuals who choose to, I should stress, to do that.”
Pressed by SNP MSP George Adam on how the Government would encourage more educators to become ASN teachers, Ms McAllan said she did not want to force teachers to move into different roles.
But she said she would seek to make it “as straightforward as is possible” for teachers to transfer from one part of the profession to another, including through continued training and “upskilling”.
Meanwhile, an annual international education study published on Tuesday showed Scotland’s performance in reading and maths has declined.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), which records the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds’ performance in science, mathematics and reading, did not change significantly between 2022 and 2025.
Previous longer-term declines seen in all three domains did not continue in the latest Pisa cycle, although performance remains significantly below that achieved in a number of earlier cycles.
The 2025 study showed that 50.9% of pupils attended schools where headteachers reported that a lack of teaching staff hindered teaching to some extent or a lot, compared with 39% across other Pisa countries.
Nearly two-thirds of pupils attended schools where headteachers also reported that a lack of assisting staff hindered teaching to some extent or a lot, compared to 38.5% across other Pisa countries.
The fundamental problem is that we are not recruiting enough teachers in the subjects we need, including Stem
Liberal Democrat MSP Duncan Dunlop said: “This is directly related to the mess the SNP have made of teacher training.
“It’s preventing children from reaching their full potential and getting on in life.
“The fundamental problem is that we are not recruiting enough teachers in the subjects we need, including Stem.
“The government is also continuing to train far more primary teachers than schools need, with thousands of primary teachers either unemployed or sitting on short-term contracts for years on end. It doesn’t make any sense.
“One practical solution would be to make it much easier for primary school teachers to requalify and go to work in our secondary schools.
“Ministers should also listen to our plans to recruit 2,000 more pupil support assistants, and 370 additional speech and language therapists across the country, making sure that children who need extra help are able to receive it.”