The upcoming Scottish Budget is the “last opportunity” to find the money to fulfil critical Scottish government manifesto promises on teacher numbers and class-contact time, the country’s biggest teaching union has warned.
The EIS has written to first minister John Swinney and finance secretary Shona Robison expressing various concerns around education in the lead-up to the Budget on Wednesday 4 December, and is encouraging its 65,000 members to underline these concerns by inundating their own MSPs with letters.
The union highlights, in particular, the 2021 SNP manifesto commitments to employ 3,500 more teachers and to reduce teachers’ weekly class-contact time to a maximum of 21 hours, down from the current 22.5 hours.
Plea for more teachers
The letter, from EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley, states: “The 2025-26 draft Scottish Budget is realistically the last opportunity for the Scottish government, via the Scottish Parliament, to allocate sufficient funds to facilitate the recruitment of the promised number of teachers this [2021-26] parliamentary term, also essential to delivering the promised tangible reduction in teacher workload through class-contact reduction.”
The EIS suggests using some of the reported £5 billion allocated to Scotland by the UK government and increasing tax on wealth and property “as necessary”.
Ms Bradley says that a fall in teacher numbers over the past two years is “posing a real threat to the quality of education provision in Scotland, and in a growing number of instances, to the safeguarding of health and safety in our schools”.
Violence ‘on the rise’
She adds: “Very concerningly, violence and aggression by young people is on the rise and the health and safety of our members, predominantly women, is increasingly being put at risk due to insufficient staffing levels.”
The EIS says that teachers work on average more than 11 hours extra per week unpaid, because their class sizes and hours of class contact are among the highest of countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Ms Bradley says that “there are simply not enough teachers employed within the system to do all of the work that requires to be done”, and that thousands of teachers in Scotland experience job insecurity, “sometimes for years on end”.
A spokesperson for the Scottish government said it is “determined to protect teacher numbers, to help support improved outcomes for young people”, citing the figure of £145.5 million offered to local authorities, which has been a source of controversy in recent months.
The spokesperson added: “We are also working with [local authorities’ body] Cosla and the teaching unions through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers to agree our approach to reducing class-contact time by 90 minutes per week, giving teachers more time out of the classroom.”
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