Members of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) have voted by a decisive majority to accept the latest teacher pay offer from the Scottish government and councils - bringing to an end the union’s industrial action over pay.
The union is the first to reveal the results of its ballot on the offer made last Friday (3 March), with 85.3 per cent of members voting to accept and 14.7 per cent voting to reject. The formal ballot had a turnout of 79.9 per cent.
Tomorrow, the EIS teaching union is expected to reveal the result of its ballot and on Monday the NASUWT Scotland teaching union ballot closes.
As the biggest teaching union in Scotland, a vote by EIS members for the latest pay offer would prove decisive.
The new offer would see the majority of teachers receive a 7 per cent increase from 1 April 2022, a further increase of 5 per cent from 1 April 2023, and another increase of 2 per cent from 1 January 2024. Also, thereafter, the pay year will be aligned with the school year (rather than the financial year starting each April) with effect from August 2024.
SSTA general secretary Seamus Searson said the union would now be pushing for back pay to be “in teachers’ pay packets as soon as possible”. However, he also hit out at the “unnecessary pay cap” that forms part of the deal; the pay rise is capped at £11,200 for those earning over £80,000.
Mr Searson described the cap as “an act of political dogma rather than a rational proposal” and said it was “a considerable barrier in the professional career structure for secondary school teachers”.
Scotland’s secondary headteachers’ organisation School Leaders Scotland (SLS) has already instructed its members to reject the offer due to the cap.
General secretary Jim Thewliss said on Monday that SLS members were “angry” and felt “devalued” by the deal.
SLS members voted to strike over pay in a ballot held in November but the union failed to achieve the required turnout; legislation requires at least a 50 per cent turnout for a trade union ballot on industrial action to be successful.
From the SSTA point of view, Mr Searson said: “The career ladder has been stifled for many years: the number of posts of responsibility has been cut severely. Posts such as these are needed in secondary schools as they are essential for good management systems. The reduction in the number of posts with responsibility attached to them has put good order in schools at risk; this is a fundamental requirement for a successful school.
“It is no surprise that teachers are walking away and this salary cap is just a slap in the face to teachers in senior positions in schools.”
The result of this latest SSTA ballot comes after a previous vote on the 14 February offer showed that members wanted to accept that deal - but by a very narrow margin.
The result led to the SSTA withdrawing from two days of national strike action on 28 February and 1 March.
The union admitted that the decision had led to “a toxic environment in some schools“ and had caused it to shed members - but Mr Searson said that to continue to take strike action while the majority of members had indicated that they wanted to accept the pay offer “would not have been fair”.
