Created on: 03 Oct 2025
A further meeting of the SNCT working group on the commitment to reduce weekly class contact time to 21 hours took place on Tuesday 30th September 2025.
Prior to this meeting, the EIS had made clear that commitments made by the Scottish Government and COSLA to make meaningful progress ‘at pace’ would have to be met in reality, to avoid a further escalation of the SNCT dispute on workload.
Despite the stated commitment to work ‘at pace’ and there having been 12 days between this meeting and the previous working group meeting, neither COSLA nor the Scottish Government were properly prepared to enable any progress on negotiations.
It had been the reasonable expectation of the EIS and the other teaching unions that consideration of the Teachers’ Side proposal on a way forward, which focusses on the use of time resulting from class contact reduction, would have been undertaken in advance of, and responses given at the meeting.
Disappointingly, neither of the other two sides met this expectation.
Concerningly, in the case of COSLA, the Teachers’ Side was informed at the meeting that the work on the tabled proposal simply had not been done.
Although agreement was reached at the meeting that further meetings of the working group would be arranged, neither the Scottish Government nor COSLA gave any concrete timescales within which they could bring formal responses to the Teachers’ Side proposal.
Faced with this complete lack of urgency, EIS negotiators decided that a special meeting of the Salaries Committee would be called to consider the potential escalation of the SNCT workload dispute.
The EIS Salaries Committee met this morning. Following a report of this week’s working group meeting, and general progress to date, the Salaries Committee unanimously decided to request that the EIS Executive Committee approves an EIS statutory ballot for industrial action in pursuit of the SNCT workload dispute.
Accordingly, a special meeting of the Executive Committee will be convened on Tuesday 7th October 2025 to consider this request.
A further update will be sent to EIS members following the decision of Executive Committee on Tuesday of next week.