Today Dundee teachers were expecting to be standing on picket lines, instead of teaching classes, as they went out on strike over the council’s decision to introduce faculties in the city’s secondary schools.
The move to faculties would see “a family of subjects” grouped together and subject specialist principal teachers removed from the authority’s secondary schools.
However, last night industrial action was averted and teachers were told they should go to work as usual, after the EIS teaching union was successful in obtaining an interim interdict against Dundee City Council at the Court of Session in Edinburgh regarding its implementation of faculties.
This means that Dundee City Council is legally prohibited from “implementing or “taking any further steps to implement” the faculty structure in schools.
Tes Scotland understands that the interim interdict has been granted not over the concept of faculties, which are now present in around 60 per cent of Scottish secondaries, but because the council failed to follow agreed procedures for introducing new promoted posts to schools.
In an update from the council’s children and families convener, Stewart Hunter, dated 6 June, he says that the next stage of implementation “involves the recruitment of faculty heads” and that “these new posts are being advertised now”.
However, according to EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan, this was “in breach of the current arrangements for negotiated outcomes”.
Mr Flanagan told Tes Scotland that, with the union in dispute with the council, principal teachers did not know if they risked losing their jobs if they failed to apply for the new faculty head roles. That led to the union seeking legal advice and, ultimately, to the decision that emerged at around 8.30pm last night.
The interdict will remain in place on a temporary basis until it is either successfully challenged by Dundee City Council or, as the EIS hopes, the council enters into negotiations to resolve the dispute.
The union says that, should Dundee City Council take steps to challenge the court’s ruling, the EIS will take further steps to defend any such action.
Commenting on the judgement, Mr Flanagan said: “This is a significant vindication of the stand which Dundee EIS members have taken. Whether it be by use of the courts or through industrial action, the EIS will continue to defend members’ interests in Dundee, and indeed elsewhere.
“Frankly, when the Scottish government is talking loudly about teacher empowerment, it is a disgrace that Dundee City Council sought to impose new management structures in the face of clear opposition from the very teachers it depends on to deliver for Dundee’s children and young people. We expect councils in Scotland to be enlightened employers, not some modern version of mill owners telling the workers what to do.”
Mr Flanagan said the EIS had offered the council a task force “to address the education challenges which exist in Dundee”. He said that the task force could look at “all the issues around attainment including leadership posts”. He pointed out that when the council first started looking at the leadership structures in its secondaries three years ago the lead teacher post had not been created.
A Dundee City Council spokesperson said: “We note the decision of the Court of Session and are studying the detail.”
