Created on: 06 Jun 2025
Colleagues
Time flies between AGMs- they say it’s when you’re having fun- and partly time does fly for that reason for me because I really love this union and three years in I love the job that I do in the union and am honoured to do it.
But time mainly flies because so much goes on, so much is packed in to the twelve months between AGMs- and this year’s been no different. We’ve been active on so many fronts, in so many spaces and at staggering speed.
We’re a union that takes every possible opportunity to push forward on the objectives that you as AGM delegates democratically determine and that means we barely stand still.
EIS Office Bearers, LA Secretaries, Reps and activists the length and breadth of Scotland, and EIS staff in all departments of the Union will have stories to tell of how they’re striving to do their best on behalf of the union which, of course, strives to do its best on behalf of teachers and lecturers, pupils and students across all sectors of Scottish education.
And we strive to contribute to the efforts of the wider trade union movement here in Scotland as part of the STUC, in the wider UK as part of the TUC, and internationally.
We’re an outfit of many parts in our own right and at the same time we’re part of a large and complex internationalist movement.
While we have broad strategy set by this sovereign body of the AGM, we operate in a fast-changing and unpredictable political, geopolitical and economic environment and we try hard to not only keep up but to be on the front foot, where we can.
So we never stand still. We never stop.
In preparing to speak to you today, I looked at my calendar as a bit of an aide memoire as to what I’ve been doing as General Secretary to support the work of the EIS nationally, at UK level and internationally- while being supported along the way by brilliant EIS colleagues across all departments - not least Leigh Meechan, my PA, who makes sure I’m in the right place at the right time, and that I’m aware of the purpose of me being there. Mostly it works.
I’ll give you a quick rundown of just some of the things that jumped out from my diary for the last 12 months.
I’ll take you back to last June when disputes were still raging over pay and jobs for teachers in the school sector and in FE. Just after last year’s AGM, we were still pressing for a pay-deal for teachers so had numerous pay-related discussions and negotiations trying to get something over the line in time for a 1st August settlement. It didn’t happen but that wasn’t for want of EIS pressure.
And it looks like this year, despite all the work put in by Des Morris our Salaries Convener and Assistant General Secretary Stuart Brown and National Officer Terry Gray to pin them down, COSLA and the Scottish Government are sailing close to the wind again- spending more time behind the scenes sparring with each other than putting everything they’ve jointly got into making a credible pay offer.
The Teachers’ Side claim for 6%, undifferentiated and above the rate of RPI inflation to continue pay restoration for teachers couldn’t be any more straightforward. And of course, there’s room for negotiation on the figure that we finally settle at.
But COSLA’s initial offer of 3% was way off the mark.
A below-RPI inflation settlement would take us backwards, not in the forwards direction that we need to go if we’re to build on the modest ground recovered through last year’s pay award that COSLA noted in the letter of offer was ‘a first step towards restoration in the value of teachers’ pay’.
We had an EJC meeting this week at which no offer was made with time ticking away towards the end of term. Colleagues, this shouldn’t be hard: the claim’s for 6, 3 was rejected and RPI’s at 4.5%. P4 could work out what a possible settlement figure could be…
But I digress- this is June 25, back to June 24 when the Glasgow consultative ballot for industrial action against cuts to teacher numbers closed with members indicating strong enough support for action for a decision to move to a statutory ballot straight after the summer.
All systems go across relevant EIS departments to prepare for that- EIS staff in FE, Organisation, Membership and Comms sprung into action.
At the same time, FELA were still pushing for a pay deal and fighting college employers on deeming of wages for carrying out ASOS. We had a big rally outside the Scottish Parliament with the FE Minister firmly in the frame. We had speeches and community singing of a demo song or two that I wrote- they were really good songs and the singing was magic… but by the end of June, still no improved pay offer… so preparations were made for a fresh statutory ballot over the summer holidays to renew the mandate for industrial action.
More systems go across the same departments to prepare for that too.
A busy enough June...!
And that was followed by a busy July that saw travels to Houston, Texas for the Vice President and I as we attended the American Federation of Teachers Convention. International guests had been invited to swell the attendance at the convention as a display of defiance against the state’s pro-Trump Republican administration, as campaigning for the Presidential election ramped up.
A highlight was a conference address by Kamala Harris just a few days after she was confirmed as the Democrat candidate and the opposition to Trump. What a contrast to the man who’s recently ordered the closure of the Education Department of the Federal Government of the USA.
Regardless of any other matters of political difference with Harris’s politics she was sincere and straightforward in her acknowledgement of the value of education, of teachers and of teacher trade unions. Colleagues, there are political actors on both sides of the Atlantic who would do well to take a leaf out of the Kamala Harris book of Education and Industrial Relations.
Onwards from Texas to Buenos Aries where the Education International World Congress was held and where the EIS delegation was actively involved. I was a panel contributor at the Women’s Caucus focused on gender equality within the trade union movement. As well as giving an overview of women’s equality in the trade union movement in Scotland - I gave an outline of how the EIS has made gains on women’s representation over the last decade or so- sisters stepping up, brothers stepping back, brothers encouraging sisters, sisters encouraging sisters.
I said we still had some work to do and that we always have to keep checking our gender equality dashboard, fingers at the ready, so that we can shift the dials as we need to so as not to reverse the gender equality gains we’ve made over the past ten years in respect of our women’s representation in our lay and staff structures. That’s a job for all of us.
The other seminar that I contributed to focused on the challenges of tracking education spending. The EIS like many other education unions internationally has a real wrestle with the opaqueness of financial information provided by national and local government.
Despite this, we’ve done a pretty good job- David Belsey has spent days of his life over the past few years mining the publicly available data to try to track the spend on education to help us put pressure on government, local authorities, colleges and universities regarding their spending decisions.
We’re upping the ante even more and have just enlisted the services of the Institute for Public Policy Research to help us. They’re going to cost the key elements of our Stand Up for Quality Education campaign- class contact reduction to 20 hours, class size reduction to 20, including the teacher numbers required for both, and including the teacher numbers required to restore the numbers of qualified teachers in Early Years; they’re also going to cost sufficient ASN provision, and free school meals for all children and young people in our education system from 3-18.
Because every single one of these is an essential ingredient of a high quality education system.
IPPR are going to research the evidence internationally from countries that do invest well in these things because they understand the importance of proper investment in education in the present- not only because of the immediate benefits that investment brings but because of the long-term societal benefits- and savings- that come from that investment too.
That work has already begun and we expect to have the IPPR final report on all of these issues by the end of October when we’ll then finalise our manifesto for the next Scottish Parliament election.
Back to last July’s EI World Congress, the President and I also spoke in the main debate. Allan on education funding and I spoke in support of an Emergency Motion calling for immediate humanitarian intervention and compliance with international law in the face of widespread starvation in Gaza following Isreal’s Raffah Ground Invasion. I spoke of the EIS’s stand for human rights, for workers’ rights, and children’s rights, as well as for peace and justice for the people of Palestine. If we don’t stand up for these rights, I asked, who will?
With the atrocities in Gaza having reached new and previously unthinkable depths of inhumanity, and the UN saying just a couple of days ago that Gaza is worse than a hell on earth, as a union we’ll keep speaking up no matter the efforts to silence us. We’ll speak up for an end to the annihilation of a people. We’ll speak up for justice; we’ll speak up for a just and lasting peace for as long as it takes to come.
August saw the start of the new academic session and the continuation of the FE dispute with a fresh mandate having been won to continue the action. As one of the STUC delegation meeting with the First Minister I put the FE dispute at the top of my agenda. I pressed the FM on the prolongation of the dispute, the new academic year starting with more strikes; pressed on the need for a pay settlement and for SG intervention on deeming.
The FM played his cards very close to his chest but said he’d look at the deeming issue. A couple of days later we got an invitation to meet with the Minister. EIS-FELA President and Anne-Marie Harley and David Belsey took up that invitation and building on all that the FELA negotiators had achieved, and the strength of the strike mandate behind them and a £5 million pound strike fund pledged by the main body, they pushed hard for an improved offer.
Into September final details were negotiated- well done to the FELA negotiators and to Garry Ross supporting their efforts – the deal was put to members with 90% accepting and, critically, we secured a win on deeming- with every single penny of pay deducted by employers from members carrying out ASOS, to be paid back- a brilliant landmark victory for the EIS-FELA, for the EIS and for all trade unions that organise in the public sector. A victory for one is a victory for all!
And for the past nine months we’ve had peace in our time in FE.
But funding cuts to the tune of 17% since 2021 mean that the fight for the future of further education isn’t over. This is only a pause in the fighting with EIS FELA regrouping ahead of the next battle. And as with the last battle, the EIS main body will be right there with you when the time comes.
Back to last September. I was unable to attend the TUC Congress in Brighton but made sure that we still moved the first Composite of Congress on The End of the Hostile Environment Towards Workers. The Ex-President nobly stepped in to deliver my speech in my absence. It was important that we got to say what we said about our early disappointment in the then recently installed UK Government and its weak progress on delivering change for ordinary citizens in the first few months of taking office.
We said we must see the fine words of its manifesto turned into swift action. We said we must see the urgent realisation of Labour’s promises to reverse the anti-worker, anti-trade union rhetoric, policy and legislation that the Tory Government spent years crafting in the interests of profit and greed.
And we said that hailing from the land of Rabbie Burns, we know that ‘The best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft aglay’ but that after 15 years of the hostile environment towards workers, we can’t – we simply cannae- be left with ‘nought but grief for promised joy’ from the new party of government in Westminster.
That’s what we said last September and that’s what we’re saying today.
The UK Government needs to get its priorities right. If it really wants to protect its citizens and our society, investment in public services and social security for social cohesion is how you do it. Tanks and bombs and submarines are weapons of destruction that we don’t need more of-weapons that could cost us much more than the money we spend on them no matter what the warmongers say. You just have to know your history to understand where countries arming themselves to the teeth takes us a human civilisation.
Welfare not warfare is what people need and deserve!
Let the UK Government turn their efforts and their spending power to the fact that children UK wide don’t have enough to eat, or to wear, don’t have enough heat and power in their homes… and more so if they’re part of a family that has more than two children. At TUC Congress, we put a question about the UK Government’s unwillingness to abolish the Two-Child Cap directly to the Prime Minister.
The question being put and the weak answer about a Task Force made Sky News. We weren’t the only ones asking that question but we added our voice loudly to the rest, and pressure on the UK Government continues to mount to scrap this callous cap.
The EIS can rightly be proud of our longstanding commitment to challenging poverty wherever it stems from and of our utter determination to keep challenging the political decisions that cause it.
Later in September I attended the Atlantic Rim Collaborative in Edinburgh as part of the Scotland delegation. The theme of the summit was Attendance, Belonging and Excellence in Teaching and Learning and I spoke on a panel session as part of the Spotlight on the Scottish Education System Day about the views and experiences of Scottish teachers.
I’d gone straight to some of the representatives of Scottish teachers within the Education Committee and asked them three questions:
And then took what they told me and made it into a bit of an acrostic poem because they told me a lot and I only had five minutes to present what they’d said.
Trusted with decision-making on learning, teaching and assessment; trusted with the time and space needed to make good decisions.
Empowered by culture change from top-down accountability approaches, narrow performativity and competition, towards innovation and collaboration around all of the purposes of education.
Appreciated valued for the profound impact that they have on the lives of children and young people, communities and society at large.
Conditions conducive to breadth, depth, creativity, enjoyment and equity in learning. Class sizes, class configuration, class contact time in the right balance.
Healthy and safe and well in school, an indisputable must for teachers and students.
Enabled to think, plan, collaborate, engage reflectively in quality, career-long professional learning, and reflect some more.
Relational human-centred, humane approaches, the principal underpinning of everything.
Supported by government and employers to realise shared moral purpose and associated professional satisfaction in contributing to the common good.
Thanks to all of the Education Committee members who sent me their thoughts.
I’m sure you’ll agree that teachers do rock!
In October, we were taking on poverty again at the Standing Up to Child Poverty Launch in Glasgow where we did two things:
I set it up together with an advisory board that both Louise Hayward and John McKendrick joined when we were initially funded by the Scottish Government to develop and begin the project, and now thanks to an AGM motion from a couple of years back, we fund and staff the Project entirely under our own steam, with Equality Learning and Development Co-ordinator Eireann McAuley making some headway on moving the project through its next phase.
Please visit the PL stall if you’d like to learn more about this vital learning offer that we make to members- anti-poverty work is core to the EIS
mission and if you’d like to learn about the PL offer more widely, talk to PL Co-ordinators Pauline McColgan and Zoe McKeown who’ll be very happy to chat to you about our brilliant PL offer.
November was quite a month too. I gave evidence to the Scottish Covid Inquiry after months of careful preparation of written evidence based on hundreds of pieces of primary evidence from the Covid years gathered from across all EIS departments.
This was a mammoth effort across the whole union co-ordinated by Leigh Meechan and written up by Anne Keenan– 130-odd pages of written evidence and then forensic preparation of the witness- me- by Anne Keenan with her legal eagle background, to take us to the point where I would speak on behalf of the EIS, answering questions from the Inquiry Team Counsel before Lord Brailsford.
As well as reporting on the experiences of teachers during Covid, I shared reflections on the lessons that need to be learned by government and employers from that whole experience. I said we need to get to work now – post-Covid and pre the next crisis- to ensure the in-built resilience of the Education system and that needs significantly greater investment in Education today:
I said that in the event of any future crisis we needed leadership from the Scottish Government and national bodies in partnership with TUs as the representative professional and industrial voice of teachers.
I said that needs culture change underpinned by a set of principles that take full account of equity and equality considerations at the design stage rather than be considered late in the day and after some damage has already been done.
I said, health, safety and immediate wellbeing must be the overriding priority as is the law, above all other less pressing considerations- protection of life and health, above and before everything else.
We look forward to the recommendations from the Inquiry… and are now preparing evidence to submit to the UK Covid Inquiry.
December featured recruitment to more new posts that the Executive Committee and Council had approved as an outcome of the Staffing Review. You may have seen in the recent edition of the SEJ that we have a significant number of new staff working in various roles within the EIS.
Huge thanks to John McLeod, not only for the running of the recruitment processes but for his skilful handling of the finances to put our funds to work hardest for us in the interests of members by recruiting additional staff to help us do all that we do on your behalf.
On into the start of 2025 and January- I was pleased to be involved in the culmination of the huge amount of work that’s gone into supporting diversity of leadership within the union on social justice, solidarity and internationalism, led by National Officer Selma Augestad.
It was a real pleasure to be part of the Still We Rise Conference in Glasgow - the first of its kind that the EIS has done- and where, as well as having been invited to address the conference and having prepared to do that - I also ended up doing an impromptu Colombian television media appearance along with the Colombia delegation to the conference, thankfully with the assistance of Alison Roy in Comms who found herself liaising with tv people in Bogota; and Paula Dixon, who not only is one of our very strong and recently expanded cadre of Area Officers, but is a fluent speaker of Spanish. Muchas bueno para mi in that instance!
And at the very end of that month, I contributed on our behalf to a Scottish Women’s Convention conference on misogyny in education.
With threats to teacher numbers in several Councils across Scotland, not least in Glasgow where I was speaking, and because I had expected the Cabinet Secretary to be there listening to my speech, I said that women and girls are less safe in school when there are insufficient numbers of staff.
I said that boys in school who have an instinct to direct misogynistic abuse at women and girls, will find it much easier to do when there are too few staff around at the time to prevent it and not enough staff to engage with them in meaningful restorative dialogue afterwards to reduce the risk of them doing it again.
We know that education staff and education are mission critical if we’re to change misogynistic behaviours and make schools into safer work and learning spaces for women and girls. Education staff and the education that they provide are critical for the work that needs to be done with boys on their journey to becoming men, otherwise too many more of them will go on to commit serious acts of gender-based violence against women and girls in adulthood. They’ll feel as entitled to coercively control or to rape a woman, as they did to make a sexualised verbal threat to a teacher or to grope a girl in school.
And I said that we need that system-wide approach to include a shared understanding of what is unacceptable behaviour and of the consequences that will occur where boys’ treatment of women and girls is unacceptable.
Girls and women need to see that our society and our education system cares about their safety- really cares about their safety and their rights as equal human beings- and boys need to see this too, to understand the risks to women and girls that misogyny poses, to understand the boundaries and that they are not entitled to cross them. This is a vital part of their education.
On into February the President and I were arguing the case for quality education and CfE within an online Colloquium Debate. The debate was titled Curriculum for Excellence: Time to Move On? Allan and I, from our different perspectives made the arguments as you’d expect and concluded that rather than move on from CfE as the debate title suggested, we’ve still to get to our intended destination and everything that CfE was supposed to deliver. We said rather than move on we should get a move on towards that better educational future that CfE promised, on the shared understanding and agreement that a Curriculum for Excellence needs investment for excellence.
March took me to Iceland as part of the Scotland delegation to the International summit on the Teaching Profession- Scottish Government being back in from the cold for the first time in three years meant that Scotland could properly participate. We got three good agreements from those discussions- critically one focused on AI and the commitment to work together to create a set of ethical guidelines and guardrails on the use of artificial intelligence in education.
I pressed for that because of the many reports that we were getting and what we were hearing in meetings about the wild west, lawless approach to AI in a growing number of local authority areas. Andy Harvey and Leah Stalker are going to be taking that work forward for us with Scottish Government and we have asked for that to be ‘at pace’.
Towards the end of April, I was part of a large EIS delegation to STUC Congress in Dundee. It was a busy one for me personally with conference speeches, contributions to fringe meetings and speaking as part of the International Workers’ Memorial Day Ceremony. The delegation as a whole was busy contributing strongly to the debate across a raft of topics to reflect EIS policy. Our delegation was brilliant: able, articulate, committed, impressive- a credit to the EIS and to the teaching profession amongst our fellow affiliates and fellow trade unionists.
Last month - May - I represented the EIS at a UCU rally outside Westminster, calling on the UK Government to Protect Education. I went there with a message of solidarity from our union to the UCU as its members fight cuts and for jobs in FE and HE, and with a message for governments north and south of the border that investment in further and higher needs to be increased.
That public funds need to be properly spent on quality education and on the educators who provide it… not squandered on eye-watering salaries for college and university principals…! That Public funds shouldn’t be fuelling competition – they should be enabling collaboration for the common good…Not channelled into the commodification of students- a model of commodified education is short-term, unsustainable and ultimately ruinous of all that we as educators… and as educated people… hold precious…!
I went and delivered the message on our behalf but had the assistance of Sarah Collins and David Belsey with the initial groundwork before setting off for London.
And UCU members and speakers shared their solidarity with striking RGU members who by now taken 5 days of strike action against compulsory redundancy. I visited the picket line last week and while I wasn’t at all pleased at the weather - driving wind and rain off the North Sea - I was pleased to learn that the strike action is having an impact. We’re now looking at 10 compulsory redundancies rather than the 30 originally proposed. But all of us on the picket line were clear that even one compulsory redundancy is not acceptable and will be fought by the EIS-ULA with the EIS right beside it.
Solidarity with ULA members fighting compulsory redundancy!
Last Saturday I contributed to a seminar session at the Stand Up to Racism Summit in Glasgow. The prominence of the far right isn’t a flash in the pan- social inequality and economic conditions are a breeding ground for racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and fascism. History teaches us that.
So there’s a lot to be done to push back against the far right, to offer political education for our members and to support them to educate our students on misinformation and disinformation… And government needs to do its bit too by creating time and space in the curriculum for quality learning and teaching that will equip or students with the knowledge, skills and attributes to protect themselves from the dangerous influences of the far right and properly support the teachers who’ll be in the front line delivering that vital education.
And full circle, we’re in June again. So far it’s featured a contribution to a seminar at Glasgow University on assessment, accountability and quality - we had a strong EIS team batting at that on all relevant aspects of EIS policy on Monday - on a reimagining of the Senior Phase in the vein of the Hayward recommendations and the imperative of teacher voice and time and space for teacher voice to be aired and shared in the Curriculum Improvement Cycle work.
On Tuesday, we launched the first major report in a series from the recent all-member survey. The survey itself was another massive undertaking. Brian Cooper has been doing a great job in trialling new ways of maximising our media profile, along with the rest of the Comms Department.
Yesterday we continued our political lobbying on amendments to the Education Bill. We’ve had some good wins on the draft legislation so far- 135 amendments shared with MSPs, with many getting traction and then making it through the Stage 2 debate and voting - but the ultimate test of our tolerance for this Bill and whether it’s going to deliver meaningful change will be at the next stage.
And now we’re back in Aviemore for this our 179th AGM.
Two years ago – right here- we launched the Stand Up for Quality Education Campaign.
We launched it determined that we wanted to up the ante after more than a decade of fruitless discussions about crippling workload, not enough ASN provision and rising levels of violent and aggressive behaviour in our schools.
Over a decade of discussions with government, with employers, at the SNCT and in other political spaces about unsustainable workload hampering the ability of the teaching profession to deliver the quality of education that CfE and a raft of policy and legislation committed us to…
And that same workload making teachers unwell and turning prospective entrants to the profession in other directions. And more than a decade’s-worth of virtue-signalling, stalling, gaslighting. A plethora of promises that raised false hope on class size reduction, on resources for inclusive education, on tackling bureaucracy, on class contact time reduction layers and layers of jam tomorrow but tomorrow never coming…
And every day teachers are being let down, children and young people let down, communities and, in fact our whole society is being let down when we consider the power of education and investment in education for the common good- for social justice, for peace, for democracy.
That more than a decade’s worth of disappointment might lead some to be downhearted, dejected, defeated… Not this Union, not the EIS.
With a history spanning 178 years, we are old, we are wise and we are resolute. Our motto coined in 1847 remains our mantra today: For the advancement of teachers and the benefit of sound learning.
We don’t lie down when the times get hard and the going gets tough.
Because we have set the course and the co-ordinates for the next stage of our voyage as Scotland’s biggest teacher trade union, to be campaign-strong and ballot-ready in the face of the neoliberal forces that have sought to tighten their grip on public services and the staff who work in them, including in Education, slowly squeezing the life out of services and the energy out of workers… and then blaming teachers and school leaders and even local authorities for the fact that they’re not firing on all cylinders when the scores appear on the doors after the various and vicious measures of scrutiny and performativity have been applied.
Quality assurance and accountability drives from HMIE inspections to local authority mini-inspections and now even in-school mini, mini inspections, SNSAs, ACEL and SQA data collection to feed the insatiable NIF and Insight data machines, the national dashboards of data- all the while no one’s keeping an eye on the fuel tank icon and the fact that the red light’s on and it’s been on for miles.
Keep driving like that and the engine will lose power and the machine will grind to a halt- that’s if it’s not highjacked on route as it splutters along by the privateers.
Defund and privatise. Defund and farm out to a trust like East Ayrshire Council is shamefully seeking to do with its Instrumental Music Service. We’re fighting those cuts and with the help of Wendy Hearty and led by the Convenor and Vice Convenor, the IMT Network is working hard on resisting cuts to IMT provision across Scotland.
That low investment, close scrutiny, high performativity and strong blame culture- we can see that right-wing ruse for what it is – even when it’s being worked by self-declared left of centre progressive governments- and we’ve not been afraid to call it out and to fight back against it- to fight back fuelled by all the strength of our collective moral purpose and from all the depths of our solidarity.
And we have the confidence and the courage to stand up for our education services because we know why we’re doing it; we know that we can do it; and we know how to do it because we’ve done it before- numerous times in fact in the last decade.
We’ve built good form in using our industrial muscle to win for our members and for our learners and students where politicians and employers have failed over the last ten years.
In FE in nine years out of the past ten- with ballots, strikes and ASOS.
Value Education Value Teachers in 2017-18- a consultative ballot, a national billboard campaign and 30,000 members and allies on the streets of Glasgow and the notice of a statutory ballot.
Pay Attention in 2022-23- with the first strikes by teachers on pay in 40 years.
And most recently in the city of Glasgow where a successful statutory ballot and the real threat of strike action by our members led to a reversal of the scandalous decision to cut 450 jobs. Go Glasgow!
We’ve won on pay, on jobs, on deeming and we can win again on workload reduction, on increased ASN provision and on lowering the risk of violence and aggression as a serious health and safety issue at work. We can and we will because we know there’s power in this union.
And the things is… employers and the Scottish Government know we’ve got the power and the know-how to push them hard for more and better again. And it seems that they don’t really like that…
For all the talk of Fair Work- and remember Scotland was to be a leading Fair Work nation by 2025- I wonder if any of you are feeling it 6 months in, feeling all the Fair Work… Our colleagues at RGU certainly aren’t!
For all the Fair Work fanfare and magniloquence by the Scottish Government, in a country where education is supposed to be valued as the leading teacher trade union in Scotland, the representative voice of the profession, we’re not being treated with the respect that should flow from that and that’s something that we need to keep demanding across the last 11 months of this government and whoever forms the next one.
Fair Work involves meaningful social dialogue between us as the representative voice of the profession and Government on the critical issues that matter to our members- that’s what respect and effective voice look like.
It’s how we should be able to raise the issues that matter to our members about opportunity, about security of employment- and about how when your classes are the size that they are, you’ve no support assistant, despite 40% of the kids having an additional need, there’s just you, to do everything for the learning, teaching and assessment of all the young people in your class, including managing the increasingly challenging behaviour, fulfilment at work’s a pipedream.
And we know that things should and can be better and we use our collective voice to say that.
Government and employers would much rather we were quiet, deferential, even, and just got on with things without complaint or criticism about the way they’re funding and running Scottish Education.
Staying schtum about the fact that almost 20% of teachers are on precarious contracts and that over 80% of NQT Primary teacher are on temporary contracts or are out of work…
Saying nothing about the hours and hours of unpaid labour- the ‘charity work’ as I believe some of the LA Secs call it- that teachers are doing because the system is so under-staffed.
Not a peep about the ASN needs that are going unmet to the distress of thousands of young people and their families.
And staying quiet about the fact that teachers increasingly are being hospitalised and left with lifechanging injuries as a result of the violent behaviours that our schools don’t have sufficient resources for interventions to prevent.
Stay quiet in the face of that?
No chance. Not possible.
I’d respectfully ask the Scottish Government and COSLA- have you met the EIS? Have you met our members? Have you met our officers and officials?
Have you met our Office Bearers? Our Salaries Convener? Have you been to an EIS AGM?
Shrinking violets, we are not.
I was at the dentist recently and the dentist told me that I had small mouth.
I’d just had a bit of treatment so it was a bit of a lopsided smile that I had to myself as I thought of the Scottish Government and COSLA colleagues who’d probably wish that to be metaphorically true…
EIS members and EIS staff stand up and speak up.
We say what needs to be said and two years ago, we launched this campaign determined to stand up and turn up the heat on government and employers to try to get them finally, finally, to do the right thing and up the investment in Scottish Education as the only real way to address the manifold and interrelated issues that have been making the professional lives of teachers difficult…miserable even… and ultimately unsafe and unhealthy, dangerous actually, for years.
And that have been underserving our children and young people, particularly the most disadvantaged.
Urgent though the issues are, we were clear that the SU4QE Campaign would be a long-range, slow-burn campaign. We’re trying to leverage millions and millions in additional funding for Education.
Last year I reported to you on the progress of the campaign…
An imminent Scottish Government Behaviour Action plan.
Soon after the last AGM, the Action Plan was published...without the inclusion of the EIS logo which we withheld because of the paucity of resources attached to the plan.
But it has some useful content and we’ve produced companion guidance for members in schools and local associations on how to use the SG’s action plan to leverage better policies and practices on behaviour at local level.
We’ve seen significantly increased reporting of violent incidents across a number of local authorities.
All useful data to help leverage better, safer provision.
This time last year we’d also just published the joint ASN statement written by the EIS and signed by all of the other teaching and support staff unions, as well as parents’ organisations, on the paucity of ASN provision.
This year we’ve followed up with data analysis on ASN provision across the local authority areas- building the case for greater investment that’s needed if the 40% of CYP with additional needs are to have their right to an education met equally to that of any other child or young person.
We held an event at the Scottish Parliament focused on the gap between the promise of ASN provision as captured in the legislation and the hard reality of the lack of it in the classroom. The same day that event took place, the Cabinet Secretary announced an additional £29 million for the recruitment of specialist ASN staff.
Without EIS campaigning the extra money simply wouldn’t have materialised. And £29 million is a welcome step in the right direction but we’re clear that the Scottish Government will need to dig deeper than that.
And we’ve been pressing hard on workload.
We made hay with the publication of the independent research on workload that was presented to the AGM last year. We met with the Cabinet Secretary on it who after some initial performative scepticism admitted that it was compelling evidence that workload was an issue that needs fixed.
Meeting after meeting we’ve highlighted the evidence, underscored the issues.
Media appearance after media appearance, letter after letter to the Cabinet Secretary and the First Minister.
Final deadline set, final deadline missed, dispute declared, more meetings and still no proposal as to how the manifesto commitment would be implemented or any simple agreement that, while it might be taking them a while, the 90 minutes will go to the preparation and correction component of the contract.
We’ve compromised on timescales, we’ve said we can compromise on phased implementation but the use of the time for preparation and correction is an absolute red line.
We’ve said that from Day 1 of talking about this manifesto commitment.
There are swathes of evidence showing the extent to which teachers are subsiding the system with free work. We had Education Support here last year warning of the effects of long hours on physical and mental health.
Patience isn’t infinite and neither is the amount of time that teachers can give to their work away from their own families- their own children, their own partners, their own parents and their own friends.
So - we have come to the point where we must escalate this dispute. Where we must ask our members to stand up and have their votes counted on workload in an indicative ballot.
Colleagues, the time is now for us to use our industrial might to fight on workload and to push back on the conditions that are making too many of you and your colleagues miserable- some of you ill.
It’s time for us to deploy another facet of our democracy and open a consultative ballot on workload. If the meetings haven’t managed to shift the will of government and employers to act in the interests of Fair Work, if all the evidence hasn’t convinced them, then it comes down to our industrial strength as a trade union to leverage fairer workload terms for teachers in Scotland.
So the time is now… or just about. I’m going to signal the ballot open in just a few moments.
I’d like you to help me with a countdown.
And as soon as it’s open, I’m going to ask the President to cast the first vote.
Allan- how did you vote?
I’m going to ask the Vice President to cast the second vote. Adam- how did you vote?
Ex-President and Vice President Elect, please cast your votes.? How did you vote?
And now to you- AGM delegates- I’m going to ask that over the next short while as your voting codes come to you by email that you be like your OBs and vote YES to strike and vote YES to ASOS in this critical workload ballot.
Stand up against unfair workload and Vote YES for yourselves!
Stand up against unhealthy workload and Vote YES for your colleagues!
Stand up against unsustainable workload and demand better for quality education in Scotland- for the promotion of sound learning and the benefit of teachers!