Fife Council is struggling to recruit teachers as the number of schoolchildren grows, amid a national shortage in the profession.
The local authority said recruiting secondary school teachers in particular subject areas was challenging and it lacks the pool of supply teachers it would like to ensure absences are covered.
Although staffing in the region’s primary schools has stabilised, the council said the national shortage had a significant impact on filling other posts.
Head teachers worked with education officers throughout last year’s summer holiday to interview candidates to try to ensure vacancies were filled before pupils returned in August.
Due to the high national demand for teachers, a number of those offered jobs rejected the posts very late in the summer holidays as they had subsequently been offered jobs elsewhere.
In a report to councillors, Shelagh McLean, head of education and children’s services, said: “While our intention has been to maintain the pupil-teacher ratio within Fife, increasing the overall number of teachers employed, this is dependent upon our ability to recruit.
“The shortage of teachers nationally continues to have a significant impact on our ability to recruit.
“In addition we do not have the level of contingency that we would normally seek to ensure that we can always fill gaps in the classroom rotas caused by sickness, training courses and other absences
“Our officers continue to work closely with Cosla, General Teaching Council Scotland and the Scottish Government regarding teacher numbers, national drives to promote teaching as a profession and to influence national discussions.
“Fife Council is continuing to explore all new and alternative routes into teaching.”
Subject areas which are in high demand but have a lack of available teachers include English, mathematics, home economics, computing, music and chemistry.
Efforts to recruit include taking on probationary teachers from Northern Ireland, which has a surplus of teachers, and attracting teachers returning to Scotland after working overseas in locations such as the United Arab Emirates.
The council has also worked with teacher training institutes to develop programmes supporting routes into the profession and council staff have been offered a supported induction route programme developed by Dundee University.
