Formal agreement with COSLA on funding for teacher retention: FOI release

Information requested

A copy of the original agreement made between the Scottish Government and COSLA on the £145.5m of funding for teacher retention.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for because there was no previous formal agreement with COSLA on the £145.5m.

Since 2012-13 the Scottish Government has had a policy position of increasing/maintaining teacher numbers and has made a range of historical financial allocations to local government to support this.

During COVID-19, in the 2020-2021 school year, we provided additional funding to Local Authorities for the recruitment of additional teachers, to aid in education recovery and to compensate for any loss of learning suffered by pupils during lockdown, bringing added resilience to the education system. The £145.5m is part of the £240m referenced in the news release https://www.gov.scot/news/educationrecovery/

We continued to offer Local Authorities £145.5m to maintain teacher numbers in subsequent years without this being underpinned by a formal agreement. On 10 December 2024, the SG and COSLA reached the first formal, published agreement on teacher numbers, as part of a wider agreement. This was published on 11 December and can be found at Education: agreement with COSLA - gov.scot

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.