Created on: 16 Mar 2026
The dispute was called by the Teachers’ Side of the SNCT for two reasons:
Over the month of February and early March, it was clear to EIS negotiators that the Scottish Government and COSLA were not really negotiating. They were waiting to see what the outcome of the EIS statutory ballot would be before deciding what to do.
The EIS is the only union of the three unions that balloted their members, who successfully achieved a mandate for industrial action. No other union, only the EIS, was prepared and preparing to take industrial action this week.
The strength of the EIS ballot result and the very real threat of industrial action, including targeted strike action, were the clear catalyst in finally prompting urgency on the part of the Scottish Government towards settling the dispute and the First Minister agreeing to release additional funding to make this happen.
It is without doubt, the work that the EIS and its members did on the ballot and in preparing to take industrial action, that focused the minds of government and employers, made them listen to the EIS and agreed the key terms that we were seeking.
Agreement towards settlement of the dispute has been reached because the EIS has achieved all key objectives:
Very uneven teacher numbers and ITE recruitment patterns meant that the Teachers’ Side of the SNCT, for the past two years, conceded that implementation would require to be phased.
The Teachers’ Side had suggested deadlines of August 2026 for Primary and August 2028 for Secondary but on the understanding that these dates might have to shift.
Whilst not the perfect solution that the Teachers’ Side had hoped for, this is down to significant shortages in Secondary, all unions were prepared to be pragmatic, just as had been the case when class contact time was reduced to 22.5 hours maximum with the implementation of the McCrone Agreement.
When this was being done, a shortage of Primary teachers meant that Secondary teachers got the improvement to their conditions first, with Primary teachers having to wait a few years to get the change to their contract when there were sufficient Primary teacher numbers to deliver it.
Members were advised of the likelihood of such an approach in various of the campaign meetings in local associations and on the campaign webinars that we held during the recent ballot.
Many of our Secondary members had expressed real concern about the move to 21 hours because of the shortage of teachers across a large number of subject areas.
When it finally came to the direct negotiation between the EIS, the Scottish Government and COSLA, The Scottish Government would not move on the 2027 and 2029 implementation dates.
EIS negotiators understood that this was the best that would be achieved without resort to industrial action, including strikes, and provided opportunity to finally address the workforce planning challenges that continue to cause real issues in our schools and for our members.
It is frustrating that workforce planning continues to be poorly handled by the Scottish Government and COSLA.
This agreement gives the Teachers’ Side and opportunity to be much more involved in workforce planning, which will make it more likely that good solutions will be found to address the constant merry-go-round of sectoral surplus and shortage.
2026: Councils are being given an additional £40 million on top of £186.5 million already pledged for recruiting additional teachers now.
The agreement includes an additional £1 million for the set-up of a Rural and Island Communities Teacher Fund to assist with this work, as well as access to the £25 million key workers’ housing fund for this purpose.
August 2027: Class contact reduction to a weekly maximum of 21 hours for all teachers in Primary and Special schools.
The time between now and August 2027 will be needed to address workforce planning challenges affecting Primary, particularly in rural and island areas where there are teacher shortages, and the Central Belt area where there are surpluses.
August 2029: Class contact reduction to a weekly maximum of 21 hours for all teachers in Secondary schools.
Workforce planning challenges are more complex for Secondary where there are shortages across a large number of subjects, including in the Central Belt, in addition to shortages in rural and island school communities.
Trade union involvement in workforce planning will be key to addressing these challenges.
Implementation is being fully funded by the Scottish Government: local councils are not being asked to fund implementation at all.
The EIS made clear our expectation that class contact reduction must be delivered without detriment to promoted staff or through cuts to any other part of the Education service. Full funding means that these expectations will be met.
Adoption of the EIS definition of ‘Professional Time’, this nomenclature replacing ‘Preparation and Correction’. The definition includes a more accurate description of how teachers use this time allocation to prepare learning, teaching and assessment for their classes, and how they prepare assessment feedback.
The EIS Salaries Committee voted unanimously in favour of the terms of the agreement and agreed to request that the Executive Committee suspend all industrial action.
The EIS Executive Committee then voted unanimously to suspend all industrial action.
EIS Branches are already preparing for next year’s Working Time Agreements.
It is important that all EIS members are involved in these discussions at Branch level, and that all efforts are made to ensure that previously provided EIS workload control advice is considered as WTAs are being drafted and discussed.
EIS Organisers are available to support Branches with these discussions.
The EIS has achieved massive wins on workload, jobs and funding, for our members, for the pupils they teach and for Scottish education, thorough negotiation backed by the strength of the threat of industrial action by EIS members.
Negotiation with or without industrial action almost always includes compromise. In this case, the compromise on timescale was necessary due to workforce planning challenges that we now have the opportunity to fix.
Teacher workload and wellbeing are firmly on the political agenda and work will begin in the coming days to make the agreement signed on Friday of last week a reality from the short weeks ahead onwards, until every teacher in Scotland has the benefit of class contact reduction from August 2029.
And in the meantime, we continue to press hard on workload otherwise nationally and locally- starting with WTAs.