EIS Urges Teachers to 'Mark Their Cross' on Workload This St Andrew's Day

The EIS is encouraging teachers to mark their cross this St Andrew’s Day to indicate their support for industrial action on teacher workload.

The EIS is currently running a statutory industrial action ballot over the failure of the Scottish Government and COSLA in delivering a commitment to reduce teachers’ class contact time to a maximum of 21 hours per week, as outlined in the SNP 2021 election manifesto.

Commenting, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, “As we celebrate this St Andrew’s Day, the EIS is encouraging Scotland’s teachers to ‘mark their cross’ in support of industrial action over teacher workload.

"Our current statutory ballot is the result of almost five years of waiting for the Scottish Government and COSLA making good on an SNP manifesto promise to tackle excessive teacher workload by reducing class contact time.

"The EIS encourages all its members to mark their cross in support of both strike action and action short of strike, to send a very clear message to Scotland’s politicians – you must deliver what was promised to Scotland’s electorate, to Scotland’s teachers, and to Scotland’s young people."

The current statutory ballot is a consequence of the Scottish Government’s failure to deliver a manifesto commitment, made before the 2021 Holyrood election, and local authorities’ failure to collaborate sufficiently with national government, to tackle excessive teacher workload by reducing teachers’ maximum class contact time to 21 hours per week.

The Scottish Government additionally pledged to employ 3,500 additional teachers to enable this workload reduction, but national and local government have also jointly failed to meet this commitment. The most recent figures indicate that there are now 873 fewer teachers in Scotland than there were in 2021. The figures also show there are 1688 fewer teachers than there were in 2007, when the SNP first came to power.

Last week, the Scottish Government did, very belatedly, produce a collection of loose proposals, light on detail as to precisely how teacher workload will be tackled by reducing teacher class contact time.

These proposals were presented to the media, bizarrely and very worryingly, prior to being shared with Scotland’s teaching unions at the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT).

The flouting of the agreed tripartite collective bargaining mechanisms by the Scottish Government, coupled with the insubstantial nature of the proposals, raises serious questions regarding the Scottish Government’s respect for trade union rights in Scotland.

The EIS is seeking a satisfactory resolution to the current dispute on workload and its Salaries Committee and SNCT negotiators will consider the proposals in the coming week.

With still nothing close to an agreement on resolution of the dispute, the EIS statutory ballot, a postal vote to comply with UK trade union legislation, in pursuit of fairer, healthier, more sustainable working conditions for Scotland’s teachers, continues and runs until the 14th of January.