Teacher numbers have fallen in Scotland again despite an SNP promise to recruit thousands of extra school staff.
Official statistics also confirm that pupil attendance rates have dropped to a record low in the last year, and exclusions remain below pre-pandemic levels.
Meanwhile, record high attainment levels have been recorded in primary schools, despite plummeting results on world Pisa rankings, which measure the performance of 15-year-olds.
Ahead of the 2021 election, the SNP pledged to recruit 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants, but the overall number fell by 122 between 2021 and 2022, and has now dipped by another 160 full-time equivalents (FTE) in the last year.
There are now 54,033 FTE teachers, while pupil numbers decreased by 346.
The number of primary teachers was down by 354, but in secondary the figure was up 175 from 2022.
There was an overall decrease in 17 local authorities, with the largest proportional falls being 2.7 per cent in East Ayrshire, or 33 FTE teachers, followed by Glasgow City and Moray with reductions of 2 per cent, or 114 and 19 teachers respectively.
The Scottish Government has previously suggested councils which do not maintain teacher numbers will face financial penalties.
Despite the change, the pupil teacher ratio (PTR), which gives a measure of the size of the teaching workforce relative to the pupil population, remained at 13.2.
