TORY leader Ruth Davidson was accused of having “lost the plot” over teaching vacancies in Scotland during yesterday’s First Minister’s questions.

Davidson clashed with Nicola Sturgeon over reports suggesting Trinity School in Edinburgh had appealed to the parents of pupils to come help teach maths due to a staff shortage.

In his letter home, head teacher Bryan Paterson cited the “national shortage” of teachers in subjects such as mathematics, science, technology, business and home economics as the cause of the crisis.

Davidson said Scottish Government rules barring teachers qualified outside Scotland from working in schools had made things worse.

She raised the example of two teachers, a couple, who moved to Scotland five years ago, but the husband had been told to “go back to school” and retrain in order to take up a teaching post, despite having worked in England as a maths teacher for 15 years.

Davidson said those who had trained as teachers elsewhere should be “fast-tracked” into Scotland’s schools. She said: “Yesterday we received an email from a couple who moved to Scotland five years ago, the husband did his teacher training in maths and he worked down south for 15 years as a maths teacher.

“When he moved here he was told he couldn’t teach maths anymore without a full year’s retraining as a student. That is a qualified maths teacher not allowed to teach maths in Scotland. And he is not alone.

“We have a crippling shortage of teachers but according to evidence presented to this parliament this year we have more than 550 qualified teachers from outside Scotland applying to teach here but who have been told by this government to go back to school themselves.”

Unfortunately for Davidson, the SNP leader had received the same email, and suggested that this wasn’t quite right.

Sturgeon hit back, saying: “I received that email as well yesterday, so I have been able to look into it. My answer is going to include something I thought Ms Davidson would have known but, since she clearly doesn’t, I’m going to tell her.

“The circumstances narrated in that email relate back to 2012. Since then – and this is the bit I would have thought Ruth Davidson, if she was going to raise this today, might actually have been aware of – because, since then, the General Teaching Council for Scotland has introduced provisional conditional registration, which allows teachers qualified outside Scotland to become registered and to take up a teaching post in Scotland while they work towards meeting the minimum requirement.”

The First Minister added: “Ruth Davidson asks me why haven’t we fixed that. Well I’m afraid Ms Davidson the answer is we have, you just didn’t bother to do the research to find out.

“That individual, while he would not have been able to teach in 2012 may now be in a position to do so, which is why we will now be contacting that individual to see if he wants to take up a teaching post.

“That is a change in circumstances that, frankly, I’m quite gobsmacked Ruth Davidson didn’t bother to find out before she came here today.”

In response, Davidson claimed: “This was only talked about by the General Teaching Council in May of this year and hasn’t been brought through yet – so it’s smoke and mirrors.”

To cheers and applause from her benches, Sturgeon told MSPs: “You always know when Ruth Davidson has lost the plot at First Minister’s Questions because we just get the angry waffling in place of a question.”