The EIS is to move ahead with a statutory industrial action ballot over teacher workload, following a unanimous decision taken yesterday by a special meeting of the EIS Executive Committee.
The move towards industrial action is an escalation of a dispute with the Scottish Government and local authority employers over their joint failure to deliver on a commitment to reduce teachers’ workload by reducing teachers’ maximum class contact time.
Commenting following the decision of Executive Committee, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, “We are now in the fifth year since the current Scottish Government administration made a manifesto promise to address crippling teacher workload after years of knowing about and acknowledging the seriousness of it, by reducing teachers’ maximum class contact time to 21 hours per week.
During this time, teachers have shown divine patience, while continuing to toil under excessive workload burdens, and thousands more teachers are without permanent contracts and out of work or underemployed, as the Scottish Government and COSLA have continually dithered, delayed and disagreed with one another over delivery of this essential commitment.
The unanimous agreement by the EIS Executive Committee confirms that teachers’ patience on this matter is now more than spent and we will now move ahead with a statutory ballot for industrial action."
Ms Bradley continued, "The EIS has been very open and transparent with the Scottish Government and local authority group COSLA. We told them that they must keep their promise to move ahead, at pace, on a concrete programme of delivery for this commitment, crucially with more time being given to teachers for essential work in support of learning, teaching and assessment to help young people’s progress.
"Having made such a promise to teachers, young people and the wider electorate prior to the last Holyrood election in 2021 that education would be prioritised in this way, it is simply unacceptable that the Scottish Government has failed to deliver.
"The repeated obfuscation from COSLA, representing teachers’ employers, has only made the situation worse. Meanwhile, teachers in Scotland continue to work the equivalent of a day and a half extra each week, unpaid, as they try to get everything done that needs to be done. It is these joint failings on the part of both the Scottish Government and COSLA that have led to this decision.”
Ms Bradley added, “In opening a statutory ballot, the EIS is keeping its commitment to its members to take all possible steps to tackle the unfair, unhealthy and unsustainable levels of teacher workload that have been plaguing teachers’ professional and personal lives for years.
"Only by the Scottish Government and COSLA keeping their commitments to reduce teachers’ workload by reducing class contact time can a move to industrial action be avoided. Both must now, at long last, agree a way forward in the delivery of the promises made on workload reduction."
Background to the Workload Dispute
- Following several years of discussions at SNCT with no progress made on the implementation of the Scottish Government’s 2021 manifesto commitment to reduce weekly class contact time to 21 hours, an agreement was reached between the Scottish Government and COSLA, in December 2024, which included a commitment that both would work together ‘at pace’ to make meaningful progress on the commitment.
- Mindful of disappointment on previous commitments to make progress, the SNCT Teachers’ Panel set a deadline of Monday 3rd February 2025, for a tangible plan for implementation to be tabled at SNCT in relation to reducing class contact time. Despite assurances, from the Scottish Government that the deadline would be met, no such plan was tabled.
- The SNCT Teachers’ Panel declared a formal dispute on 7th February 2025. The formal dispute was lodged on two grounds:
- The lack of progress on the reduction of class contact time to 21 hours.
- The lack of agreement on the use of time within the contractual 35-hour working week.
- The second of the above is the basis of a long-standing red line of the SNCT Teachers’ Side: that the time resulting from a reduction in weekly class contact time to 21 hours is allocated, in full, to the ‘preparation and correction’ component of the contract, in order to make progress in addressing unsustainable, unhealthy and unfair levels of workload.
- Initially, discussions regarding the dispute took place through meetings of the SNCT Joint Chairs and were moved, by the request of the Teachers’ Side, to a distinct SNCT working group. The early meetings, both of SNCT Joint Chairs and the working group, failed to produce any progress, with COSLA and the Scottish Government progressing their own discussions through a separate working group that excluded the Teachers’ Side of the SNCT. The SG-COSLA promise to produce a report for the wider SNCT by June was not met.
EIS Consultative Ballot
- On 9th May 2025, EIS Council approved the opening of a consultative ballot in response to the lack of substantive progress at SNCT. The ballot was conducted between 6th June 2025 and 18th August 2025, with EIS members indicating strong support for action:
- Yes to Strike Action: 83%.
- Yes to Action Short of Strike: 92%.
- A full meeting of the SNCT was held on 20th August 2025, just ahead of the conclusion of the EIS consultative ballot, at which the Scottish Government tabled a proposed work plan to be taken forward in the SNCT class contact time working group, involving all three sides.
- The EIS Salaries Committee took the position that in order for such discussion to take place, a potential request to hold a statutory ballot would be paused.
- The EIS indicated publicly, and directly to both the Scottish and COSLA, that the meetings of the SNCT working group scheduled for 18th September and 30th September would act as a measure of their joint commitment to making the promised swift and meaningful progress.
EIS Efforts to Progress Negotiations
- In an effort to effect progress within negotiations towards agreement, the Teachers’ Side tabled a discussion paper at the SNCT working group meeting held on 18th September 2025.
- The Scottish Government and COSLA both responded positively to the tabled paper at the meeting, and agreed to give its content further consideration prior to the further meeting of the SNCT working group scheduled to take place on 30th September 2025.
- At the SNCT working group meeting on 30th September 2025, 12 days after it had been tabled, neither the Scottish Government nor COSLA were able or willing to respond formally to the previously tabled Teachers’ Side paper.
- In the case of COSLA, there was admission that the work required had simply not been undertaken, while Scottish Government officials were still awaiting a view from ministerial level. Furthermore, neither the Scottish Government nor COSLA were able to provide any timescales in which formal responses could be given.
EIS Salaries Committee decision & Subsequent Executive Committee decision
- The EIS Salaries Committee considered the lack of meaningful progress in negotiations at a special meeting on 3rd October 2025. At this meeting it was unanimously agreed to request a statutory ballot for industrial action in pursuit of an acceptable outcome to the SNCT dispute on reducing weekly class contact time to 21 hours. This request for a statutory ballot has now been unanimously agreed by the EIS Executive Committee.
