In its 2021 manifesto for the Scottish Parliament elections, the SNP promised to reduce teacher class-contact time by 90 minutes per week. Yet by September 2023 the EIS teaching union said “little or no progress” had been made.
Today education secretary Jenny Gilruth admitted that “time for teachers” could be the key to resolving many of the challenges in the Scottish education system - from deteriorating behaviour and attendance to curriculum reform.
Ms Gilruth said she was “very committed” to delivering the pledge on class-contact time. She added that the teacher pay deal reached after strike action last year had not looked at “changing conditions or improving conditions for teachers” and the class-contact time promise was “an opportunity to do just that”.
However, she was also forced to admit that the reduction would not be delivered in 2024-25 - although she said she hoped to “make progress this year”. Ms Gilruth added that this month she was expecting to receive the results of “independent research”, which would indicate how much the contact time commitment would cost to deliver.
Referring to reducing teacher class-contact time, she said: “That, to me, is part of the jigsaw that hasn’t yet been tackled. That’s actually how we can go about responding to some of the challenges in our classrooms, whether that’s on attendance, behaviour and on curriculum reform, too. We need to build in time for teachers.”
Ms Gilruth made her comments while giving evidence on the 2024-25 budget to the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee. She also revealed she was considering whether or not to claw back funding from councils recording a “significant fall” in teacher numbers.
Reducing teachers’ class-contact time
Increasing the number of teachers in the system is key to the government delivering on its pledge to reduce contact time, and it has said it will increase teacher numbers by 3,500 over the course of the 2021-26 Parliament.
However, according to the 2023 teacher census published in December, teacher numbers fell in 15 councils despite government funding of £145.5 million to protect teacher and school support staff numbers.
Ms Gilruth said: “We hold back some of that funding for the very purpose that, if a local authority doesn’t meet the requirements of that ring fencing - this funding for teacher numbers - we will not pay it out. So I retain the power to do that and hold on to that additional funding.”
However, Scottish Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy suggested that councils had perhaps had to use the funding for other priorities, including “free breakfasts, or writing off school meal debt, or meeting the needs of pupils with additional support needs”.
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