Last night, representatives from each of the five parties represented in the Scottish Parliament were asked if they supported the 10 per cent campaign, given - as EIS salaries convener Des Morris put it - ”the continued need to restore the value of teachers’ pay, which has declined sharply over the past 12 years”.
He also cited the impact of “further forecast huge rises in the cost of living” and highlighted ”teachers’ efforts during the pandemic in maintaining continuity of education despite the risks to themselves as frontline workers”.
Here is how the parties responded:
SNP
Education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville told EIS members to listen not only to the positions set out by panellists last night but to what they proposed in budgets “to actually ensure that they’re actually wanting this in reality”.
She said she wanted a “settlement that is fair for teachers” but that the government had seen a “real-terms cut” to its budget, adding: “That is the reality the Scottish government has to undertake on these negotiations.”
Ms Somerville pointed to the agreement of the pay deal that amounted to 13.51 per cent over three years from 2018, although EIS members watching the online event wrote in the comments section that, as with recent negotiations, the process leading up to the deal was a long and fraught one - in October 2018, around 30,000 teachers took to the streets of Glasgow to demand a significant pay rise.
Tory education spokesperson Oliver Mundell said there “hasn’t been the kind of money and support you would expect off the back of the pandemic”.
He added: “If the cabinet secretary can find the money to make this affordable, I won’t be saying no. I think teachers are underpaid.”
But he had not been convinced that the EIS approach of accepting the lower 2021-22 deal before campaigning for a 10 per cent increase in 2022-23 was the right one, and believed a more “incremental approach” might have been better.
Mr Mundell also said: “I think there should be the possibility of additional payments for teachers who work outside of their contractual hours who are already offering our young people far more than they have to.”
Scottish Labour’s education spokesman Michael Marra said: “We’re absolutely clear in Scottish Labour that there should be more than a real-terms rise in teachers’ pay.”
This would be close to the EIS target of 10 per cent, given the rate of inflation, he said. He added that pay offers in recent times had been “essentially real-terms cuts”.
Mr Marra said: “It’s right that the union has come in with a substantial claim and [is] actually negotiating robustly to make sure that they can meet the needs of teachers.”
Greens
Jon Molyneux, a Glasgow councillor who represented the Greens last night, said his party would “push for a package, [involving] both workload and pay, that will improve the conditions for teachers”.
Liberal Democrats
Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ education spokesman, backed a pay rise to “reflect the increasing cost of living”, although he did not specify how much that should be.
He added: “But there also needs to be recognition that if we don’t give a decent pay rise then we will start to see some serious recruitment shortages and, when that starts, it’s quite difficult to reverse.”
