The EIS teaching union will only support Scotland’s much-anticipated behaviour plan if it comes with more money attached, general secretary Andrea Bradley said this afternoon.
Ms Bradley used her keynote speech at the union’s annual general meeting (AGM) in Dundee to say the EIS could not back the plan if it “fails to identify any additional resourcing to solve the problem of violence and aggression in our schools”.
She added: “No resources attached to the action plan, no EIS logo attached to the action plan. It’s as simple as that.”
More staff essential to improve behaviour
Ms Bradley said there was “a straightforward message from this AGM to the Scottish government: wishful thinking and a glossy, shiny action plan will not lead to better behaviour-related health and safety in our classrooms - additional government money to recruit more staff will”.
On 23 May this year, education secretary Jenny Gilruth said the behaviour plan - initially promised last November - would be published “in coming weeks”. The current parliamentary session ends on Friday 29 June, by which time most Scottish schools will have broken up for the summer holidays.
Ms Bradley said today: “If you want safer, more settled classroom environments, where all children and young people can learn, it comes at a cost - and that cost can no longer be teachers’ health, safety and wellbeing.”
Ms Bradley also addressed the 2021 manifesto promise to reduce teachers’ weekly class contact time by 90 minutes a week, and said this “must be delivered as promised and it must go to teachers for preparation and marking - no ifs, no buts, no maybes, that’s an absolute red line”.
She issued a similarly strong message over teacher numbers, a day after an emergency motion at the AGM warned that other councils could follow Glasgow plans to cut 450 teaching posts over three years.
Ms Bradley said: “If the Scottish government intends to renege on that manifesto promise on teacher numbers - talking as they are now about only maintaining teacher numbers - then they need to come clean to the whole electorate about it.
“Come clean that they’re not going to recruit 3,500 more teachers to boost the staffing of a service that’s already on its knees. Come clean to the teachers who are massively subsiding the education system with free work because there aren’t enough teachers right now.”
‘Totally unacceptable’ reality of unpaid work
Ms Bradley also highlighted the independent research on workload commissioned by the EIS and published this week. The “totally unacceptable” findings included that, on average, teachers who took part were doing more than 11 hours of unpaid work a week over their contracted hours.
“We can’t keep allowing the thousands and thousands of hours of unpaid work to clock up,” she said. “Those thousands and thousands of hours equate to the permanent jobs that thousands of teachers...can’t get.”
She also recapped the joint statement issued by the EIS and 10 other organisations this week, “demanding more investment in additional support needs for the almost 40 per cent of children and young people who now have a recognised ASN”.
This week, teaching unions rejected a pay offer that fell “far short of expectations”.
“As a result of the strike action that EIS members led in 2022-23, teachers at the top of the main-grade scale now earn £48,516,” said Ms Bradley, but “the amount now earned is almost 25 per cent less than it would have been if salaries had been annually paid at the rate of RPI inflation since 2008”.
Scotland can emulate other countries with high pay
She added: “Had teachers’ salaries been paid in accordance with retail price rises, teachers at the top of the main grade would now be earning £61,234 - a much more attractive salary that more accurately reflects the value of teachers, that would help to strengthen recruitment and retention, and move Scotland closer to the 23-25 countries in the [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] that pay higher salaries to experienced teachers, including Spain and Germany, Canada and Australia, and very close to home, England and Ireland.
“If these countries can do it, so can Scotland.”
Ms Bradley welcomed this week’s “first sign of movement from the Scottish government in progressing some elements of education reform”, but added that the proposed national agency Qualifications Scotland “must be a brand new organisation, not a 60-minute makeover or a rebranding” of the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Ms Bradley also launched the EIS education manifesto in the run-up to the UK general election.
She said: “We know that underinvestment in education in the here and now is a massive error of political judgement.
“Politicians need to see as we do that the cost of a few million in savings in the short term will be massive in the lives of the young people whose futures hang by a thread - the young people for whom school and their teachers are a safety net.”
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