Tuesday June 9th 2026
Glasgow City Chambers
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Sarah Hilley
The number of Glasgow teachers from ethnic minorities is “far too low,” a meeting heard.
It comes as the number of school pupils from ethnic minorities hits a “massive figure” of one in three young people according to the city’s education boss.
The city’s education committee was told there is a struggle to recruit teachers from ethnic minority backgrounds but other areas including medicine manage to attract people.
Figures show 66 per cent of Glasgow teaching staff are white while only 3.6 per cent identity as ethnic minority. A total of 31 per cent did not disclose their ethnicity.
Councillor Stephen Curran, Labour, said: “We are still struggling to have a workforce which looks like the city and particularly the young people in our establishments.
“The numbers of staff who report as being from an ethnic minority is still far too low for what we have as an aspiration for the city.”
Education director John McGhee said: “We have one in three young people now in our schools who are from the BAME community – that is a massive figure now that we haven’t had in the past. I suspect we will hit a tipping point where we will start to see young people coming through into teaching.”
Pointing out other sectors including medicine are able to recruit people, he said: “We attract many young people from our ethnic minorities into other areas. For some reason we haven’t been able to get them into teaching to the same degree.”
Describing the profession as “phenomenal”, he added: “Historically 30 years ago teaching didn’t have the pay that it has now. It is a very well paid profession.
“In Scotland teachers are much better paid than they are elsewhere in the UK. I think we have to continue to show young people in our service how good that is.”
He told last week’s education, skills, and early years city policy committee that he feared national debate around behaviour in school could put people off choosing the career.
He said “a lot of talk in the press” about schools going “downhill” is not true.
Mr McGhee added: “I concur that there is lots of work to be done to get our teaching workforce looking better than it currently is in relation to our make up of society.”
The issue was discussed as the committee was presented with the education department’s annual business plan.
It said: “Over a quarter (29.1 per cent) of pupils in the city speak English as an additional language. There are 175 different languages spoken by pupils in Glasgow’s schools.”
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