Scotland’s teachers have sent Valentine’s Day reminders to both the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), urging them to stay true to commitments that were made five years ago to reduce excessive teacher workload. A delegation from the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country’s largest teaching union, delivered Valentine’s cards and poems to both the Scottish Government and COSLA (photos attached) to remind them of the commitments that were made to tackle teacher workload, employ 3,500 additional teachers, and reduce teachers’ maximum class contact time to 21 hours per week.
The EIS is currently running a statutory industrial action ballot of its members over the non-delivery of these commitments, and is urging its members to return their postal ballot papers before the deadline of the 4th of March. Previous indicative and statutory ballots indicated strong support for industrial action, but tight restrictions in current trade union law made lawful industrial action impossible. The EIS is calling on its members to ensure that they return their new ballot papers, to ensure that the restrictive thresholds can be beaten and a mandate for industrial action can now be achieved to help bring a resolution to this year-long dispute.
The delivery of the Valentine’s Day reminders to the Scottish Government and COSLA this week also coincides with the start of a national advertising campaign (images attached) by the EIS, which highlights current excessively high teacher workload in Scotland, and calls for the promises made to Scotland’s teachers on workload, teaching jobs, and class contact time reduction to finally be delivered after five years of waiting.
EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said,
“Scotland’s teachers love teaching, and they love doing all that they can to support the young people in their classes. What they don’t love is excessive workload, driven by top-down bureaucracy and constant new initiatives introduced by government and employers, and they don’t love the understaffing of our schools. Neither do teachers love being misled by government and employers, who previously pledged to ‘work at pace’ towards delivering this five year-old commitment to tackle excessive teacher workload, to employ 3,500 more teachers, and to reduce teachers’ maximum class contact time to 21 hours per week.”
Ms Bradley continued:
“Progress towards delivery of these commitments has been so slow that it could easily be mistaken for static. Five years on from the original pledges being made, and over a year past since a firm set of plans for implementation was supposed to be produced by the Scottish Government and COSLA, and the reality is that teachers are at breaking point because of workload , thousands of new and recently qualified teachers are still desperately looking for permanent jobs, and teacher class contact time remains amongst the highest in the world, at 22.5 hours per week and time for preparation the lowest. Instead of action from the Scottish Government and COSLA, we have simply had empty words, hollow promises, dither, deflection and delay.”
Ms Bradley added:
“In sending these Valentine’s reminders to the Scottish Government and COSLA, we are urging them to remember what is truly important: valuing education, valuing teachers and valuing young people. The EIS is standing up for quality education and standing up for Scotland’s teachers and learners. We urge all of our members to stand with us and make a clear statement to the Scottish Government and COSLA by completing and returning their postal statutory ballot papers. We must send a very strong and very clear message, to ensure that the promises made to us are finally kept by those who made them.”
For further information, please contact: comms@eis.org.uk
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