This would see “a family of subjects” grouped together and subject specialist principal teachers removed from the authority’s secondary schools.
The first day of strike action is scheduled to take place on Wednesday 22 June across all of Dundee’s secondary schools.
Secondary members of the EIS teaching union in Dundee have been voting in a statutory industrial action ballot over the past three weeks, with 88 per cent of those voting backing the move to strike, with 12 per cent against.
Turnout in the ballot was 62 per cent.
Dundee EIS secretary David Baxter described the council’s proposals as “damaging” and called for it to abandon its plans, given the strength of opposition.
Mr Baxter said: “The council’s plans would remove the vital experience offered by subject specialist principal teachers from our schools, with long-term damaging consequences for education in Dundee and for the young people in our schools. Teachers do not take strike action lightly, and it is now time for Dundee Council to heed this clear warning and to halt their plans before it is too late.”
He said: “At a time when the focus should be on supporting education recovery for young people, Dundee Council is proposing changes that will heap additional workload onto already over-burdened class teachers and remove vital expertise from secondary subject departments.
“Teachers in Dundee have voted, strongly, to fight these changes and they will have the full support of the EIS national body in their battle to oppose faculties and to protect the best possible education provision for young people in all Dundee secondary schools.”
In 2016, teachers in West Dunbartonshire Council went out on strike over the authority’s plan to introduce faculties and won.
Their introduction, though, is not supported by the research, said Professor Nixon.
He told Tes Scotland earlier this year that faculties have been found to increase teacher workload; lead to the marginalisation of subjects; and limit career progression - as well as subject support and specialism.
In a paper outlining its faculty plans and making the case for the change, Dundee City Council cites the need to improve attainment. It says that Dundee is “in the bottom percentage for performance in comparison to the other 31 local authorities” and that inspection has revealed “a prevailing theme of inconsistent quality in the provision of learning and teaching between subjects”.
It says that faculties “comprised of a family of subjects” will be “instrumental in achieving greater consistency” and that it hopes it will alleviate “the current continued drift of subject [principal teachers] to faculty posts in other local authorities”.
The papers also say the authority expects to save in the region of £570,000 a year following full implementation, which it says will happen in most schools by the end of 2024-25.
