Created on: 10 Oct 2025 | Last modified: 11 Oct 2025
Good afternoon colleagues.
I hope you will bear with me today as this is my first ever speech at a political party event.
We are here to talk all things education. And there certainly is a lot to talk about!! Now whilst this might start off all doom and gloom, trust me I want to reach positive destinations… On the EIS website we have a counter which has been steadily counting the days since February 7th when, after years of no progress, the teachers' side of the SNCT set a deadline for Scottish Government and COSLA to table a plan that addressed:
The missing of that deadline led to the declaration of a formal dispute at the SNCT; a step that we had hoped could be avoided. The counter now stands at 250 days since the deadline was missed.
During those 250 days we have waited, we have (metaphorically speaking of course) nudged and prodded. We have held meetings with Scottish Govt and COSLA. We have asked politely. We have sought to be constructive. We have made reasonable requests for meaningful progress to take to our members.
During these 250 days teachers have carried on working with their usual commitment to the learning of young people. Teachers during these 250 days have carried on working way beyond their contracted hours to deliver quality education.
In 2024, the EIS published the report from independent research we had commissioned on teacher workload. It found that ON AVERAGE teachers are working over 11 hours beyond their contracted 35-hour week, unpaid and in their own time. 11 hours in which they are missing out on family time, leisure time or just time to relax and recharge and take steps to preserve their wellbeing.
Conversely, at a recent meeting of the SNCT Reducing Class Contact Time sub group, a group tasked with finding a solution to the current dispute on workload and class contact time, COSLA stated very clearly that it hadn’t done the work that it has previously agreed to do when referring to a discussion paper we had tabled at the previous meeting.
This is a paper designed to help progress the work; a paper which redefines a teacher’s preparation and correction time (we are calling it professional time).
COSLA has said it wants to use some of the additional non-contact time to “drive the improvement agenda”…but it hasn’t done the work. Teachers have done the work, teachers are always doing the work, but employers “haven’t done the work”. What message does that give to teachers about the urgency with which our employers are working to reduce our weekly class contact hours – despite the agreement to do so in principle.
The Scottish Government officials have also not yet been able to give a formal response to the teachers’ side paper, despite there now being two meetings since that paper was tabled.
It is both frustrating and disappointing that the efforts of the teachers’ side to offer constructive and tangible solutions in negotiations are not being met with steps forward from either the Scottish Government or COSLA, while all the while teachers across Scotland are weathering a crisis of unsustainable, unfair and unhealthy levels of excessive workload.
This is precisely why, on Tuesday this week the EIS Executive met and decided to move to a statutory ballot on getting the job done – reducing workload by reducing our weekly class contact hours by 90 minutes as promised by the SNP manifesto of 2021.
Colleagues, you must be aware by now that the SNP – and indeed all the mainstream parties – promised to reduce weekly class contact and to employ 3,500 extra teachers and staff to implement it.
On Wednesday of this week SG indicated that whilst they saw our paper as a positive step they were seeking some “flexibility”; now, whilst our position that the entirety of the 90 minutes be given to teachers “professional time” and that the 9 hours professional time would be at the direction of the individual teacher remain a red lines for us, we believe that there are elements already existing within the SNCT handbook which would allow teachers to engage with the “flexibility” the Scottish Government is looking for.
The Scottish Government wishes “flexibility” in order to deliver “reform” in education – the provisions already within the SNCT handbook afford this; it has been done before. Furthermore, there is precedent of measures such as additional inservice days being used in the past to allow teachers the space and time to engage with changes in education delivery. Such measures could potentially form part of any agreement resolving this dispute.
It is important that I am clear on this point with you, colleagues: without action to reduce the unsustainable, unhealthy and unfair workload of teachers we have neither the time nor the headspace to properly engage with further education reform.
The workload crisis must be addressed, and the first step is affording the full 90 minutes from reducing weekly class contact time to teachers so that they can carry out the fundamental preparation of learning, teaching and assessment within their contractual working week.
Yesterday the EIS sent statutory ballot notifications for industrial action to all 32 councils in pursuit of our dispute on workload i.e. the reduction in class contact.
The ballot will open in mid November, close in mid January and produce an industrial action mandate that will last through May 2026 to mid July. So, colleagues, there is time to sort out the dispute without any industrial action.
We don’t want to go on strike or carry out industrial action short of strike action. We don’t want to disrupt the learning and teaching of children and young people, but what else can we do when promises, accepted by the electorate including teachers in good faith have not been met, or are not showing tangible progress towards being met.
That is what we are asking for, meaningful progress to meet a promise by the government to address the workload of teachers.
Having read the manifesto that people voted the SNP into government on, I know that you also want quality education in Scotland and, you promised to deliver it. I am afraid, though, that we have moved to a time where those promises must be delivered or you may force us to take industrial action in order to deliver what was promised – “To recruit 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants, allowing teachers more time out of the classroom to prepare lessons and improve their skills.”
Teachers are fed up. Our patience has run out…we have been patient for far longer than the 250 days on the website counter.
A couple of weeks ago, in my Facebook memories (the only way I keep track of what I’ve done these days) I found an open letter written to current FM Mr Swinney. The letter stated that “the job of teaching has become nearly impossible to do adequately, far less to the high standard expected of us”.
The writer goes on to emphasise that they are an SNP voter, but they have concerns that the SNP and Scottish Government are not tackling the real issues in education but are applying a plaster over a gaping wound.
The letter talks of inclusion being drastically underfunded, that it is common for teachers to be physically assaulted by children; that there is a dramatically increasing number of children requiring additional support needs but that resources are being continually depleted. Fewer classroom support workers, more time being spent trying to deal with challenging behaviour meaning the majority of needs in the classroom are not being met.
I wonder, for how many in the room these sentiments ring true. This letter was sent in September 2018 when Mr Swinney was Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills.
My question to you is this, has anything changed?
Well, the responses to all our surveys in recent years would say categorically, yes, things have changed, but, not for the better.
Between December 2024 and February 2025, we conducted and all member survey on workload, stress and wellbeing.
What did our members tell us about their workload?
"I deal with behaviour or complete tasks that we are asked to do at work and then at home I plan or develop or mark".
"I only do a little extra time most weeks it means that there are some things that just don't get done or roll onto the next week...and the next week. I find I am constantly juggling expectations and what is possible with the time available. I have tried to cut this down, but the stress associated with the build-up of unfinished tasks is unmanageable for me."
What did our members tell us about ASN: over 2/3 of members say they don’t have time to deal with ASN support work out of class
"Due to lack of time, I feel that planning for ASN is always done in my own time and there is never any time to talk through this with PSAs. Meetings seem to be arranged during NCCT which we are then never given back."
These challenges not only hinder our ability to deliver the best education possible but also impact on our well-being.
This is simply not healthy. Stress is a part of life, but our survey shows that 30% of us have sought help from a GP for work related stress.
On the question of remaining in the profession in 5 years’ time a fifth say they won’t and over 32% don’t know, and the biggest reason for folk not remaining in the profession is levels of workload with nearly 50% identifying this as the prime reason.
"I will soon be 55. I can’t see myself being able to physically or mentally manage the job for any more than another two years at best."
"The respect for the teaching profession is gradually being eroded between, pupils, parents and authorities. I want to go to work and be treated with dignity."
"I don’t like the fact that every day you are at work you feel you aren’t doing your job properly. You can’t support your kids properly; you don’t have the resources you need. It’s just not the job it used to be, and you don’t feel you are achieving and succeeding."
But colleagues, I’m not here to just talk about teachers. Our university sector is struggling too. Our members from Robert Gordon University, just across the city, and at the University of the West of Scotland have been out on picket lines to stand up for quality education in the higher education sector, where the compulsory redundancies that are being proposed will directly affect the quality of education experienced by students in those establishments.
Further education has benefitted from a period of relative calm industrially in the last couple of years, but they have still been cutting staff stealthily - Audit Scotland has just reported that most of Scotland’s FE colleges are unsustainable due to insufficient government funding.
This is a sector that consistently demonstrates hugely positive impacts on raising the attainment and achievement of those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, by delivering quality education.
But as I said at the beginning of this speech, I don’t want to be all negative because there is hope for education. The education reviews undertaken in recent years, if implemented, could reap rewards for children, young people and students in Scotland. But, in order to engage with reform teacher workload absolutely needs to be addressed first.
With grown up conversations about taxation, significant ring-fenced investment could be brought into Scottish education. We are a wealthy nation, yet children and young people are coming to school hungry. As Darren McGarvey said, “Poverty is not the problem, the problem is wealth.”
Just yesterday the STUC published a report for Tax Justice Scotland which illustrated, amongst other things, that a 2% tax on those with assets of over £10 million could raise an additional £492m per annum, which, according to the figures in the report could fund 11,600 newly qualified teachers or, and this is not suggested in the report, it could fund the number of teachers actually needed and then use the rest to provide better pay for and greater numbers of classroom support assistants.
The metaphorical doors of the EIS are always open, and we welcome and encourage constructive dialogue with political leaders. Indeed, positive regular scheduled dialogue with political leaders, is, for us, a vital means of getting the voices of over 60,000 educators heard at Holyrood.
Educators and politicians all want better outcomes for children young people and students, but stressed, overworked teachers who are also facing an onslaught of violence and aggression are physically and mentally unable to keep on going the extra miles without a demonstration of solid support from the government and employers to start to address the issue of workload by living up to the promise of reduced class contact time and allowing individual teachers to be in charge of how they use those extra 90 minutes.
Colleagues the future of Scotland depends on its children and young people, and the futures of these children and young people depend on quality education. I hope you will play your part in building that future by investing more in education, and by acting to reduce teacher workload to make the profession sustainable and allow teachers to play our part in delivering quality education for all.