Created on: 22 Dec 2025
The EIS has urged Scotland’s teachers to ensure they ‘wrap-up’ their vote in a statutory industrial action ballot on teacher workload during the festive season.
The EIS industrial action ballot is currently underway and closes in the New Year, and teachers are being urged to use their vote now to ensure that their voice is
heard. The EIS is urging teachers to vote ‘Yes’ to both strike action and Action Short of Strike (ASOS).
Commenting, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, “As we move into and through the festive season, we all have many things on our minds. From writing and sending cards to making sure all our gifts are bought and wrapped, and from making arrangements with friends and family, to ensuring that there is enough food to go around, there literally aren’t enough hours in the day.”
Ms Bradley continued, “While teachers are well accustomed to being extremely busy, we are asking all our members to remember to do one particular thing this festive season – and that’s to ensure if they’ve still to cast their vote, that they complete and post their voting paper in the EIS statutory workload ballot. It’s essential that teachers do not overlook their ballot paper amidst the flurry of festive activities, and that they all complete and return their ballot paper as soon as possible.”
Ms Bradley added, “The message to teachers is clear – ‘wrap-up’ your vote by completing and returning your ballot today. With the festive season also being an extremely busy time for the postal service, it is likely that ballot papers will take a little longer than usual to be delivered once completed and posted. For that reason, it is even more important that all our members act now to ensure that their vote counts in this important ballot.”
The EIS workload ballot was launched as a result of the failure, on the part of both the Scottish Government and local authority group COSLA, to deliver on promises made to Scotland’s teachers and pupils prior to the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. In its manifesto, the SNP – the party that forms the current Scottish Government administration – promised to tackle excessive teacher workload through two significant pledges: to reduce teachers’ maximum class contact time to 21 hours per week, and to employ 3,500 additional teachers in Scotland’s schools.
Almost 5 years on from those pledges being made, and neither of them have been met. Scotland’s teachers still have amongst the highest class-contact time commitments in the world, coupled with comparatively large class sizes; and Scotland now has 810 fewer teachers than when the pledge was made - meaning that Scotland is 4,310 teachers down on the level promised in the 2021 SNP Manifesto pledge.
The EIS statutory workload ballot, a postal ballot to conform with UK trade union law, is underway and closes on the 14th of January.