THE president of the National Union of Teachers says Swindon's crisis level teacher shortage could be solved by encouraging more into the profession.

Kathryn Stallard says there are many qualified teachers in the town who have left the profession, and wants the Government to tell them the benefits of returning.

But she believes that few will be enticed back until ministers address the problem of the 50 to 60 hour working weeks experienced by many teachers.

Mrs Stallard was in Swindon to meet the town's NUT members and discuss union policy.

The union attracted criticism when it pulled out of a national agreement to reduce teachers' workloads.

If the agreement gets the go ahead, it will mean classroom assistants teaching whole classes, something the NUT, Britain's largest teachers' union, has always objected to.

The Government hopes the agreement will attract more people to teaching, with promises of less bureaucracy and more free time away from pupils, giving extra time for planning lessons and marking work.

But Mrs Stallard, 47, said: "There is a reserve of teachers who have left the profession.

"They didn't leave it because of the students but because they couldn't cope with the workload any longer and felt there was too much Government intervention into their work in the classroom.

"If these experienced and qualified teachers returned to the classroom, Swindon's problems would be solved, and if we started unpicking the issues of workload and impact of league tables on teaching we would encourage these people back to teaching."

However, she went on to underline why the NUT objected so strongly to classroom assistants taking lessons.

She said: "We have campaigned for decades on the fact our children deserve to have highly qualified professional teachers in front of them.

"Teachers spend four years studying to qualify and while we do support classroom assistants we do not believe they should be allowed to teach classes on their own."

Mike Welsh, headteacher of Goddard Park Primary School and Swindon branch secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, which has signed up to the agreement, admitted he had reservations.

He said: "Our main concern is that the agreement is workable and is very clearly resourced.

"We are monitoring the level of financial resource given to make the agreement work, and if it is inadequate we will withdraw.

"We feel the role of teaching assistants needs to be developed because the Govern- ment understands that not enough people are coming into the profession to give teachers the non-contact time, but it would only be a certain amount of high level teaching assistants who took on a more prominent role."

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