Created on: 04 Jun 2026
A riochdairean, a co-obraichean, a aoighean bràithreil, a caraidean agus a gualadairean, tha e na thoil-inntinn mhòr dhomh fàilte a chur oirbh gu Dùn Dè airson a’ cheud is ochdadamh coinneamh choitcheann bhliadhnail EIS
Delegates, colleagues, fraternal guests, friends and comrades, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Dundee for the 180th EIS AGM.
As a linguist by trade, and one who is trying to learn Gaelic, I thought it only right that I should greet you in a language that is an integral part of Scotland’s heritage and cultural identity. At 180 years old this union is deeply embedded in that heritage and culture.
Before I get into the meat of my speech there are a whole swathe of thanks I’d like to offer. Firstly, I’d like to thank my employer, Aberdeenshire Council for allowing me this extended time out of the classroom to carry out both my national and local duties on behalf of the EIS. My heartfelt gratitude also goes to all the EIS staff and officers. Without you, activists such as myself simply wouldn’t be able to do what you support us in doing.
You are all just so supportive and genuinely amazing. Thanks also go to my family, and though they live far away and are no longer at home anymore they have an uncanny knack of keeping me grounded, usually by asking, “so what is it you actually do now?” Immeasurable thanks are also due to the wee cadre of office bearers I have had the greatest of pleasure working (and socialising) with over the last 2 years; to Paula, Allan, Mark (and Val to come)…good times.
Thanks also to the local associations across the land (and over water) that have taken the time to invite me to their gatherings. It’s been a real joy getting to know you all and speaking to your members. My final note of gratitude goes to my local association.
From first thinking about standing for election as Vice President, they have been right behind me and supported me all the way. Though I’m sure they will be more than happy when they no longer have to sit at the front of AGM anymore. And it would be remiss of me not to mention our outgoing LA Sec, Dave Smith, who’s mentorship over the last few years working as an Assistant LA sec has been truly invaluable.
Right, let’s get it on…
It certainly doesn’t seem 12 months ago that Andrea stood up here with that super hi-tech ballot launcher that opened our consultative ballot on workload, to force the Scottish Government and COSLA to meet the promise to reduce class contact time and employ more teachers. What a twelve months it has been! If this year has shown us anything, it is that collective action works, professional voices matter, and hope is strongest when it is organised.
The EIS is the largest teaching and education union in Scotland, representing the overwhelming majority of teachers and lecturers across our nation. Colleagues this union is a powerful union. When 65000 members raise their collective voices those in the corridors of power listen…not always straight away but they listen.
When the EIS campaigns, the public pays attention. When the EIS negotiates, it does so with the strength that comes from tens of thousands of education professionals standing together. Our influence this year has not appeared by accident.
It has come from members in schools, colleges and universities who have given their time, their voice and their conviction to the cause of quality education. And colleagues, that is power. This union is a fighting union, and when we fight, we win. We don’t win for the EIS we win for you, our members.
Back in March we finally won on workload. And whilst we won’t see the impact straight away, getting Scottish Government and COSLA to agree the 2021 manifesto commitment was a game changer. For the first time in, however long, we set about a campaign of industrial action on something other than pay.
Now this brought with it its own set of challenges, some of which were logistical such as a privatised postal system in absolute chaos, and for some of us the weather. But a major challenge was getting the message across; yet over the course of a consultative ballot and two statutory ballots the message was adapted, refined and delivered via a variety of means to the point that not only did we breach the punitive 50% threshold, but we smashed it.
And it was all down to a huge collective effort by activists, officials, officers and members in staff rooms up and down the country encouraging their colleagues to Stand Up for Quality Education by voting to reduce their own workload. Colleagues, I am proud of that effort, and I am proud of our victory. We stood up for our members. We stood by your desire to reduce your workload.
And, we took the bold step of balloting again. As a secondary teacher myself, I recognise and understand the frustration of waiting longer to see the benefits of increased professional time (formerly known as personal preparation and correction time), but it is simply impossible to deliver any sooner on a national scale because the teachers just aren’t there in sufficient numbers and that is a fact.
But comrades, we are all activists in this room, and I am sure we all take steps to reduce our own workload burdens, where we can and by using the one tool we have available to us to do so.
The Working Time Agreement. We must continue the ongoing job of encouraging our colleagues and members in our staffrooms to use it to help themselves. To help themselves say no to that line manager that says, “I know you’re busy but…”.
Colleagues, we are working ourselves to the bone. We are on our knees. We are still working in an antediluvian system that is based on beyond-their-sell-by date ideals of testing, testing and more testing; a system which is encouraged and promoted by those that demand bureaucratic accountability of every teacher or lecturer at every single level of teaching.
I would suggest that a teacher who is putting in 11 hours of unpaid overtime, who is buying glue sticks for their class is already feeling that accountability more acutely than those demanding it can imagine.
Colleagues, the work has already started on putting into practice the agreement to reduce class contact time. Hopefully the handbook will see appropriate amendments before we finish for summer. There is a lot to do, but I know our Salaries Committee will be on task all the way.
Standing Up for Quality Education also means standing up for those in the system who are marginalised or discriminated against. This union is at the forefront of tackling misogyny, mis- and dis-information and the far right.
Our Many Good Men teaching and learning resource was successfully launched back in January aimed at older teens, but we are already putting together resources for use with younger learners. We have been running a really successful anti mis-and dis-information campaign across social media in a bid to Change the Story and promote equality, diversity and inclusion through strategic communication that fosters critical thinking.
Our work in tackling the far right continues and will continue to be a major area of work, but in October of last year we produced an extensive briefing paper aimed at supporting members in having conversations about the far right. We also produced a briefing paper providing vital guidance for members in supporting transgender pupils in our schools.
With the publication recently of the EHRC Draft Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations, I am sure an update of our own guidance will be forthcoming.
As I said earlier the EIS is a campaigning union, and we campaign and win across the whole spectrum of education in Scotland. We have stopped compulsory redundancies in UWS and our members at ENU who have been out on the picket lines have just won a no-compulsory redundancy agreement. We have balloted our members in GCU and we will no doubt be on the pickets there soon.
Colleagues it is an utter disgrace that these institutions which hold literally millions of pounds in reserves and in cash are deliberately trying to make employees redundant. To the 6 figure salaried principals and vice-principals of these establishments who think education is a commodity which can be traded to make money, I say that your deluded capitalist way of thinking has no place in Scottish education.
Education is commonweal, it’s a public good. Education is the bedrock of society and as such needs to be protected from managerialism and commodification. And the EIS will do just that!
Whilst industrially things have been comparatively quiet for FELA colleagues, there is still the constant Fight for the Future of Further Education. The FELA Follow the Money Report proposes several measures to ensure not only the survival of but also the thriving of the FE sector in Scotland. These include:
Real terms ring fenced investment
Governance reform including bringing principal’s pay into line with the public sector, and TU representation on boards,
Opposing privatisation
Fair taxation to finance education
Academic freedom and professional autonomy for lecturers and no more casualisation of employment
More support for inclusive education to tackle alienation and promote critical thinking.
The programme of GTCS registration for college lecturers is ongoing with almost 4000 lecturers now registered.
As I know, you are all too aware, Health and Safety is the ticking time bomb in Scottish education that is just waiting to go boom! The levels of violence, aggression, misogyny, bullying, sexism, ablism, homophobia, transphobia and racism that teachers and lecturers are having to deal with on a daily basis is completely and utterly intolerable.
Colleagues, our employers and the government are not yet up to the task of protecting us. We have a legislative right to work in an environment that keeps us safe. It matters not that it is a 3-year-old that has bitten your arm, or that a 5-year-old has grabbed private parts or that an 8-year-old has told you to eff off, or that a 14-year-old uses the N-word and the P-word over and over.
What matters is that something is done and that we are protected and allowed to get on with the job that we maybe used to love but are finding it increasingly hard to do so right now.
Slopey shouldered excuses, passing blame onto the class teacher are unacceptable; saying that it is somehow the fault of the class teacher that a 10 year old called them a b***h is simply passing the buck. Members in a school I recently visited told me that levels of violence and abuse that were considered unacceptable only 5 years ago are being routinely ignored in order to be able to simply carry on with the day.
But, whilst the government and our employers need to do more to protect us, colleagues, let’s start to take action ourselves. Let’s try to force their hand more swiftly; as we know full well, they don’t do anything unless pushed.
Every school should have a trained safety rep and
Every school should set up a safety committee. These reps and committees can demand safety inspections including the inspection of all documentation relating to health and safety issues, such as risk assessments.
Make sure your school has an Accident Book. This is a legal requirement, and the employer may be in breach of health and safety legislation if they fail to keep one.
Every single incident of violence or aggression should be reported to the employer, at the very least, via whatever channels they have established, but also to the police if necessary.
Report all equalities related incidents.
If you are off due to work related injury, make sure it is recorded in the accident book and make sure your absence is not recorded under normal sickness. It comes under a separate allowance.
The same with work related stress, follow SNCT Part 2 Section 6.20-21 and get your absence certified as work related stress by your GP and your employer’s OH provider, your absence should then not come off your normal sickness allowance. There is now tribunal case law to back this up…the Employment Relations Committee is a treasure trove of useful info.
Where appropriate put in claims against the employer.
As I said at the top, this union is a fighting union and we just love winning. If you need our support, we are big enough to be able to provide it, and 65000 members is a heck of a lot of support.
Whilst I am on health and safety, I want to give a message of solidarity to our 8 welders at City of Glasgow college, who in the face of utterly disgraceful intransigence by their employer are still on strike simply to demand the RPE that they require to keep them safe at work.
How about this for brass neck? This college sent three senior staff to Tartan Week in New York recently and spent £700 on a limousine, £2000 on a supper, accommodation costing over £4000. In total, according to an FOI by The Ferret £14000 was spent on this trip, yet the College won’t spend the £700 odd pounds for the RPE kit required to protect each welder.
Colleagues. It is important that City of Glasgow College, hears our message that the EIS is behind our welders all the way.
Colleagues, Standing Up for Quality Education requires significant and properly ringfenced funding. Money that can be tracked into the coffers of our employers and followed right down to the schools where it is meant to be going.
This new SNP government, despite its previous, frankly lacklustre record on education has been given a 5th mandate to govern, and this time it really does need to do better, and I mean way way better. We have a new Cabinet Secretary, and I have message for her… Mairi, for this electoral campaign we provided you with a costed manifesto for Quality Education for this new parliament:
reduced class sizes of 20,
reduced class contact time of 20 hrs,
the restoration of Early Years Teachers back to 2012 levels (if not 2007),
fully funded and resourced support for ASN and
universal free school meals
To implement the 5 main demands by 2030 will require £860m a year. This is not an insignificant sum, but there are those who reside in Scotland, or those who own land in this nation that can afford to pay more to help subsidise Scottish education.
Mairi, this government needs to use its tax raising powers to inspire the extremely wealthy to stop avoiding / evading and start contributing more. Many of them have so much that they couldn’t possibly spend it in a lifetime, so I say we need to encourage them to be more proud of where they live or own land, and to be fair tricket to be given the opportunity to create a fairer, more equal society and to contribute to a quality education system that really does enable those within it to become successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens…because colleagues, there is nothing wrong with those 4 ideals but things have gotten a wee bit lost along the way.
Colleagues, I can’t end my speech without mentioning the aspect of this year, and last, that has given me most joy and pride. It has been the utmost privilege to represent you, and this great union on the international stage.
I only hope that I have been able to demonstrate understanding, empathy and a true spirit of international solidarity wherever I have been. I have certainly loved meeting and more importantly learning from sisters and brothers the world over.
As I have found, TU solidarity does not begin and end at the school gates, it extends to our brothers and sisters throughout Scotland, to those across the UK and also on the island of Ireland, but more importantly it is truly international, it is global.
The Trade Union movement is the largest civil society organisation in the world. It is present in virtually every country, even though in some places it has to exist in the shadows. We are fortunate, both by being in Scotland and (mainly) in the public sector that union membership is a recognised and valued feature of employment. This is not the case in many parts of the world.
The international Trade Union movement is now more necessary and more vital than ever. As you may know, in January, I and a group of Education Trade Unionists, from literally across the globe (Australia, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Singapore, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and the UK) joined a mission led by David Edwards from Education International and organised by my brother Saed Erziquat, the indefatigable General Secretary of the General Palestinian Teachers Union, to bring a message of solidarity and hope to Palestinian trade union sisters and brothers in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Our unions had helped to fund a training programme for Palestinian teachers, and we were going to celebrate their graduation, as well as learn more about their situation. Colleagues, we didn’t get in. We were detained at the Israel / Jordan border and some of my sisters and brothers were interrogated by members of the IDF. For the 5 or 6 hours we were detained at that border point I felt a tiny part of what it must be to be a Palestinian, either in Gaza or the West Bank…I felt utterly powerless.
Completely without agency and beholden to a force that held all the cards (or passports in our case). We were deliberately denied entry simply because we were seeking to bring solidarity to Palestinian trade unionists.
Colleagues, whilst I don’t want to minimise the issues we face in our day to day, as trade unionists we must also keep in mind our brothers, sisters and non-binary siblings across the world whose day to day may indeed involve serious risk to life.
We must extend our trade union solidarity and human solidarity to teachers, lecturers and all workers not only in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Myanmar and Cuba, to name but a few, but also to wherever there is conflict, unrest and authoritarianism.
Before I finish, colleagues, if you will indulge me briefly, I worked for 2 years as a VSO Volunteer teaching English in Cameroon. At the time my colleagues in school would joke that civil war would never break out in Cameroon because there are too many languages (it is home to 275 living indigenous languages) and no one could agree with each other long enough to form an alliance, so peace was much easier.
This is no longer the case, and the anglophone western provinces are effectively at war with the majority francophone provinces (a conflict very few will have heard about I suspect). Anyway, I would like to dedicate this speech to a kind and helpful man who I had the pleasure of working with for 2 years in the Far North of Cameroon. Mr Fon was a colleague in the Government Bilingual High School of Maroua.
Mr Fon took me under his wing when I arrived and helped me cope with the culture shock of teaching in state “funded” education in West Africa. Sadly, Mr Fon passed a few years ago, having moved back to his native North West Province, but I only found out fairly recently. Mr Fon passed from complications related to starvation, due in part at least to the anglophone crisis which led to the closure of 80% of the state schools and therefore non-payment of salaries by the Cameroonian government.
He was a good man who didn’t deserve to go out that way.
In conclusion and to slightly paraphrase Lech Walesa’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (delivered by Danuta his wife as he was barred from attending):
"We [must] respect the dignity and the rights of every[one] and every nation. The path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity."
Comrades none of us can truly be free to live our lives in peace and comfort until we are all free to live our lives in peace and comfort.