Created on: 07 Jun 2024
Thank you very much for that strong display of solidarity with EIS FELA members out on strike for the 15th day today, still having to strike for the fair pay increase that they should have got, coming up on two years ago.
You will remember from the strike action during our Pay Attention campaign last year how important it was to receive solidarity from other sections of the union and from the wider trade union movement. It really is gold for the soul. So thank you.
And please keep sending solidarity to EIS-FELA. Don’t worry about over-doing it. You can never over-do it. Because solidarity is the superpower that trade unions and trade unionists rely on to get us through the darkest of days and out the other side with the wins on pay and conditions that shine on and that sustain us for years and decades to come.
Sustain the workers who win them and shine on for all trade union members. We encourage each other with our wins: we raise the expectations of our colleagues; we raise the standards that employers have to meet.
A victory for one is a victory for all.
Solidarity is the glue that binds us.
Two weeks ago, our Executive Committee showed unequivocally the strength of the EIS’s commitment to trade union solidarity, to supporting our members across this Union- specifically members in in EIS-FELA at this time- and our collective commitment to helping them win this latest dispute with their employers.
To help cushion the financial hardship and the emotional pressure that comes from having to take 15 days of strike action, losing 15 days’ pay during the worst cost of living crisis in living memory. To help raise their morale as college employers act like feudal lords with the power to starve their workers back to work by threatening 100% deeming of lecturers’ wages for weeks- even months on end- lecturers who are carrying out legitimate action short of strike.
And so far, those employers seem to be getting away with applying some of the worst provisions of the anti-trade union laws… the Minister for FE practically greenlighting deeming in the Scottish Parliament last week.
When you’ve got that going on, and you need to call a local dispute at the same time as the national dispute so that you can stand up for yourself,
you need a little help from your friends-a lot of help from your friends- and the good thing about being a union member is you’ve got thousands and thousands of friends who’ve got your back.
Which is why the Executive Committee last week agreed to open up a £5 million Hardship Fund to sustain striking FELA members right up until the end of the academic session. A massive financial commitment that shows our FELA members that our union knows the power of solidarity, knows how to show it, and knows the value of Further Education to our society.
That our union knows the value of lecturers as professionals in providing that education; understands the egregious injustice of the ‘defund and privatise’ strategy that’s in play at the moment- government and college management in cahoots- and lecturers, support staff and particularly working class students, the collateral damage.
The EIS knows all too well that despite the blethering rhetoric about Fair Work, the Scottish Government and college employers would like to see EIS FELA, and by dint of that, the EIS, disappear from the sector, leaving the path clear for rule by the Principals and the privatisation agenda where colleges serves businesses, and not people and communities, not working class students and their communities.
Union busting instincts seem to be driving the decision-making in college board rooms the length and breadth of the country and in Holyrood backrooms. But no matter what the employers do, or the politicians don’t dae- the EIS is a union that fights hard for all of our membersand we’re here to stay in the college sector.
We’re going nowhere!
That £5m fund that we opened last week is a fighting fund as much as it’s a hardship fund. And that money and the solidarity from across the Union will help sustain the strength and resolve of EIS-FELA members until this dispute is settled and an acceptable resolution is won. And it will be. Because hard though it is to do it, industrial action delivers better outcomes for workers.
You wouldn’t have won your last pay rise without it.
STUC data published in April shows that striking trade union members in Scotland Collectively won an additional £3 billion in pay and pensions on top of the original offers that were made to them by employers before they took industrial action.
That’s the strength of our collective superpower. So we don’t buy the rhetoric that ‘Striking’s in no one’s interests…’ Because industrial action clearly is in the interests of workers, including teachers and lecturers. And that’s what employers and centre to right governments are afraid of.
And we’re in no doubt that it’ll be the continuing industrial action that will deliver the fair pay and the protection of jobs and courses that the EIS-FELA is fighting for.
And once we’ve won this dipsute, EIS FELA with the EIS by its side, will continue the even bigger fight for the Future of Further Education in Scotland. Because as educators and as trade unionists who have social justice to our core, we know what’s right for our young people, for our communities and for our whole society… and we’re prepared to stand up together for it.
We’ve shown that non-stop determination to stand up for what’s right over the past year. That non-stop determination has come from you: in your local associations,from Reps and activists, from the national Office Bearers, and from each and every member of EIS staff.
We have supported each other and stood united and strong as we’ve campaigned for quality education, for the Future of Further Education, for better funding of Higher Education, to protect the right to strike. And stood united and strong for peace and for social justice.
And I’d like to take this opportunity to thank every single one of you and your fellow activists; to thank Paula, Allan and Andrene for their unstinting commitment and dedication to this Union and its members; and to thank all EIS staff for their tireless efforts each and every day, alongside our Committee Conveners and members, our Council members and our Local Associations, in driving forward our collective ambitions.
This Union is solid.
In the past twelve months, together, we’ve been standing up for proper prevention of and protection from, violence and aggression in our schools-
nearly 900 school branches completing the Behaviour Survey, the results and recommendations shared with the Scottish Government, COSLA and all MSPs, as well as relevant education stakeholders.
We’ve done media interview after media interview, shining a light on the damning results from the national behaviour survey, whilst local associations - Aberdeen City and Borders, most notably – laid bare the stark reality of the abuse that many teachers face on a daily basis.
We’ve been standing up for proper prevention and protection from violence and aggression at the Cabinet Secretary’s series of behaviour summits. Pushing hard to influence the final behaviour action plan through SAGRABIS, being crystal clear that the EIS logo of endorsement will not be forthcoming if the plan fails to identify any additional resourcing to solve the problem of violence and aggression in our schools. No resources attached to the action plan, no EIS logo attached to the action plan. It’s as simple as that.
So, colleagues- a straightforward message from this AGM to the Scottish Government:wishful thinking and a glossy, shiny action plan will not lead to better behaviour-related health and safety in our classrooms; additional government money to recruit more staff will!If you want safer, more settled classroom environments, where all children and young people can learn, it comes at a cost and that cost can no longer be teachers’ health, safety and wellbeing.
We will keep standing up to be counted on that.
Not unrelated, we’ve been standing up since the last AGM for proper additional support needs provision-at meetings, in the media, and earlier this week, we released a joint statement along with other teacher and support staff unions, and key parents’ groups, demanding more investment in ASN for the almost 40% of children and young people who now have a recognised additional support need against a backdrop of 33% spending cuts per capita. ASN teacher now to 89 pupils. Ten years ago, it was 1 ASN teacher to 40.
Just as I said we would at last year’s AGM,we’ve been busy building alliances- with Unite, UNISON and GMB who represent the support staff, and with parents’ groups- NPFS, Connect and the Glasgow City Parents’ Group. All were signatories to the joint statement along with our sister teacher unions and all know as we do that creating national Additional Support Needs legislation, then cutting local authority budgets, then commissioning reviews when things inevitably go wrong- reviews that deliberately miss out investigation of resourcing- does not demonstrate real political conviction in respect of inclusion.
As my comment in the joint press release said:
"The under-funding and under-resourcing of ASN provision is a national scandal which must be addressed as a matter of urgency… The Scottish Government and Scotland’s local authorities cannot sweep this issue under the carpet any longer – they must invest much more in ASN provision to ensure that we can mitigate the impact of poverty on children’s education and truly get it right for every child.”
So we’ve been standing up for proper ASN provision and as a union we’ve been standing up for you- the teachers- whose workload continues to be totally unacceptable, as the workload research published yesterday has highlighted- 11 hours of unpaid work a week from the average teacher.
That’s even worse than it was at the last count. We’ve raised the issue at SNCT meeting after SNCT meeting, in bi-lateral after bi-lateral, stressing the importance of the promise that was made to the electorate to reduce teacher contact time to 21 hours per week– a promise to the electorate, including tens of thousands of teachers, hundreds of thousands of parents and carers.
We’ve been stressing the importance of full delivery of that manifesto promise in the interests of quality education and the imperative of the time being given to teachers for preparation and marking- because if it’s not, the workload crisis worsens and teacher wellbeing deteriorates further and we’re just not standing for that!
So, another message to the Scottish Government from this AGM- the additional 90 minutes must be delivered as promised and it must go to teachers for preparation and marking.
No ifs, no buts, no maybes- that’s an absolute red line.
And linked to workload, we’ve been standing up for teacher numbers because despite the other big Scottish Government manifesto promise to recruit 3500 more teachers by 2026, in December we saw teacher numbers fall for a second year in a row; and as yesterday’s Emergency motion highlighted, Glasgow City Council has already moved to implement a massive cut of 450 teachers over the next three years.
The Scottish Government says that it values education and wants to close the poverty-related achievement and attainment gap yet shortchanges councils in their funding year upon year and then freezes Council Tax and then councils themselves shamefully start squeezing the life out of schools.
Meanwhile it’s you, the young people and their families who suffer as local and national government play politics with our public service delivery.
We’re even starting to hear echoes of a new and very pernicious narrative- this from politicians whose party manifesto states a clear commitment to increase teacher numbers- that protecting teacher numbers, protecting Education is a luxury that some councils in Scotland- including its biggest-can no longer afford. It has appeared on social media, in some newspapers and I’ve even heard it implied in the Scottish Parliament just in the last few weeks.
None of this is acceptable.
Not acceptable to parents and carers who have a right to expect that their money, their taxes will be spent wisely, including on their children’s education. Not acceptable to our members who have worked tirelessly, beyond capacity and to their own detriment, for the benefit of children and young people as we’ve emerged from the pandemic – and have done so holding onto a promise made to them in 2021 that things would be better!
Not acceptable to the EIS.
But if the Scottish Government intends to renege on that manifesto promise on teacher numbers-talking as they are now about only maintaining teacher numbers- then they need to come clean to the whole electorate about it.
Come clean that they’re not going to recruit 3500 more teachers to boost the staffing of a service that’s already on its knees.
Come clean to the teachers who are massively subsiding the education system with free work because there aren’t enough teachers right now.
Come clean that they’ve no intention of ending the precarity of employment that’s blighting the personal and professional lives of thousands of teachers.
Come clean and then pay the price at the next Scottish Parliament election and maybe even the General Election before that.
I had another email just this week from a member on the issue of precarity. He said: ‘I’m currently looking for work for next year…I'm writing to express my distress at the prospect of having no secure employment from August and joining an ever growing number of practitioners on the supply list.
To speak personally, I'm a solo-parent of two young children. Frankly, it feels irresponsible of me to rely on the possibility of finding full-time supply work any time soon. I've begun to look for full-time employment in other sectors. I've worked so hard for this and really enjoyed having my class this year. I feel I'm a reflective practitioner and I was excited about the prospect of continuing my career and becoming a better teacher… I know so many other probationers …currently experiencing this stress.’
Emails like this are not isolated occurrences.
Last summer I received a deluge of emails from young teachers in a similar position. Not only were they stressed and anxious with the uncertainty around their next steps professionally, they couldn’t make key life decisions- to rent or buy somewhere to live, to get married, to start a family. Their lives artificially and unfairly being kept on hold.
So, I wrote to the previous First Minister to raise the issue at that time. The response - a scheduled meeting with the Cabinet Secretary was brought forward, but little more. Teacher numbers fell again in December. Then came some tightening of grant conditions. Maybe some fines for Councils who are already cash-strapped, for not maintaining teacher numbers but then in the last week, the Scottish Government providing a workaround for Councils as to how the cuts can be made without too much of a penalty.
It’s Kafkaesque.
But it’s not only the 2021 manifesto commitment that’s on the line. Failing to recruit more teachers will breach the promises made back in 2018 when we signed the Value Education Value Teachers pay deal- the promises to reduce teacher workload and improve teacher wellbeing way back then.
That deal was struck with John Swinney- then Cabinet Secretary for Education. Six years on, we’re in a worse and worsening position. I wrote to John Swinney on the day he was sworn in as First Minister, signalling that while he might have been on the backbenches for the past year, we’ve stayed on the frontline of campaigning for quality education that’s rooted in social justice and we are keen to see how he’ll demonstrate a commitment to Education.
While we wait for the reply to that letter- another message for the Scottish Government: warm words are cheap.Teachers and quality education are not.
We simply cannot run a quality education service on empty promises and the goodwill of teachers that’s already been well overspent.
We can’t keep expecting teachers to give more and more at personal cost to them and their families.
We can’t keep allowing the thousands and thousands of hours of unpaid work to clock up.
Those thousands and thousands of hours equate to the permanent jobs that thousands of teachers- our members- like the one who wrote to me this week, can’t get.
This AGM is calling time on unpaid labour in the teaching profession! Teachers must be paid for all the work that they do and must be paid properly.
So turning to our pay claim. Teachers’ pay must be restored to the value that it held in 2008. That’s why we submitted a 6.5% pay claim. Less than the percentage uplift that MSPs have been awarded for this year. And that’s why our Salaries Committee unanimously rejected the pay offer that finally came from COSLA on Tuesday, after almost five months of waiting.
2% from August till May, then 1% from May till August 25.
It’s undifferentiated which is good but more than misses the mark in its value. It amounts to an increase of £54 a month by the time you get to May 2025. But that fails to take into account the continuing pressures of the cost of living. Bills are not going down, they’re just rising by a bit less than before.
We know that more and more of our members are experiencing hardship. The number and nature of the applications to the Benevolent Fund tells us that. So we unapologetically echo our demand for a pay increase that begins to recover some of the losses that teachers have suffered over the past decade.
Since the onset of austerity and the suppression of public sector pay, teachers’ salaries have significantly declined in their real terms value, falling further and further behind the salary levels in many of the education systems amongst OECD countries.
As a result of the strike action that EIS members led in 2022-23, teachers at the top of the main-grade scale now earn £48,516. Despite the gain prompted by our strike action, the amount now earned is almost 25% less than it would have been if salaries had been annually paid at the rate of RPI inflation since 2008.
Had teachers’ salaries been paid in accordance with retail price rises, teachers at the top of the main grade would now be earning £61,234 – a much more attractive salary that more accurately reflects the value of teachers and that would help to strengthen recruitment and retention, and move Scotland closer to the 23-25 countries in the OECD that pay higher salaries to experienced teachers, including Spain and Germany, Canada and Australia, and very close to home, England and Ireland.
If these countries can do it, so can Scotland.
We don’t accept that pay restoration for teachers is not affordable, especially not when teachers are owed millions for the unpaid work they’ve been doing for years and continue to do today! We accept that full restoration can’t happen overnight but we don’t accept the Scottish Government mantra about a fixed budget. Scotland does not have a fixed budget – the government chooses to have one- and the underfunding of Education as a vital public service is not inevitable,
it’s a conscious political choice.
And Antonia Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations agrees. The report of the global UN Inquiry into the Teaching Profession that the EIS gave evidence to, was published a couple of months back.
It said:
‘Quality education is not possible without adequate financing.
Long-term funding for well-qualified and well-supported teachers is an investment in the quality and sustainability of education systems and is more efficient than short-term measures to fill teacher gaps, which result in high turnover and attrition.’
It continued…’Governments should invest in teachers through competitive salaries and incentives; as well as through the provision of qualified education support personnel.’
‘Secure employment and decent working conditions for teachers’, the UN report said, ‘are foundational for recruitment and retention in the profession.
Working conditions should also provide for stable contractual forms; a safe and healthy workplace; manageable teacher-to-student ratios; support structures for managing problematic student behaviour; balanced workloads; adequate social protection and pensions; and working-time arrangements (including duties beyond classroom teaching such as lesson preparation, marking and out-of-class student and parent engagements) that allow for adequate rest and work-life balance.’
So, the United Nations is standing up for quality education.
The EIS is Standing Up for Quality Education.
Why isn’t the Scottish Government, when manifesto after manifesto, it has promised it would?
There may be a fixed budget from Westminster but the Scottish Government not only makes political decisions about how to spend that money- and buckets of it go elsewhere other than on public services- they make the political decisions around whether to use the revenue raising powers that are devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
For their own political reasons, they largely choose not to.
So, the consequences of their funding decisions are on them.
Our last pay settlement – hard fought with days of strike action and loss of salary- is not to blame for the underfunding of Further Education… or the bad weather that we’ve been having in June… or the fall of the Roman Empire or the plethora of other faults, shortcomings and calamities that have been attributed to implementation of our pay settlement!
No- a 56 billion pound budget plus revenue raising powers that include the ability to place greater taxes on wealth should mean that giving teachers a modest pay rise- should be more than possible if the political will were there to make it so.
No matter what employers and SG decide to do this time around when it comes to teacher pay, though, our collective trade union conscience will be clear. We do the right thing…always. On pay and everything else.We believe in proper funding of public services and decent pay for public sector workers.
We stand for education as a social good, a cornerstone of a society that’s built on principles of social justice. We stand up for quality education from 3-18, for our youngest learners in Early Years to our Sixth Year students in Secondary, and we stand up for the right of all of these young people to be taught by GTCS-registered teachers who are in the classroom with them and not on screens. And we stand up for smaller classes in the knowledge that teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.
We stand against the dithering and delay we’ve seen over the last year on Education Reform that means too much time is still being spent in classrooms doing things that contribute little or nothing to the quality of learning and teaching: too much time on over-assessment and having to dance to the tune of top-down accountability.
The roadmap to an improved Senior Phase experience is there- the route out of the treadmill of high stakes exams that crushes the joy out of learning and teaching, that’s bad for health and wellbeing, and that sidelines the young people whose courses don’t feature exams.
We continue to stand up for better.
Finally, two days ago - after repeated prompts on our part – we saw the first sign of movement from the Scottish Government in progressing some elements of Education Reform. Colleagues, we will be looking at the terms of this Bill in detail but we are clear, as we’ve been from the beginning that the reform it brings forward has to be meaningful. Particularly in relation to the SQA- Qualifications Scotland must be a brand new organisation, not a 60-minute make-over or a rebranding.
We stand against the top down accountability measures that see teachers’ workload rocket and their health and wellbeing nose-dive – HMI inspections, meaningless tests – like SNSAs – which tell us nothing we don’t already know.
We stand for trust in teacher professional judgement and for the human-centred approach to change which was so boldly promoted in our National Discussion.
We stand against the poverty that’s inflicted on our young people and their families as a result of political choices that are from the same play-book as the underfunding of public services.
We demand free school meals for all Early Years and school aged children and young people: there is absolutely no valid excuse that can justify allowing children to be hungry or stigmatised in school- absolutely none- and to continue to make excuses about this is unforgiveable.
We continue to stand up for equality across our education settings and against discrimination of any kind- racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, ablism.
We stand up for the right to strike- committed to fighting the Tory’s anti-strike laws industrially, legally and politically, up to and including non-compliance, for as long as this draconian legislation is in force.
We stand up for an immediate ceasefire, a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East and against the sale of UK arms to Israel- no equivocating.
That and much more are reflected in the Stand Up for Quality Education Manifesto that we’re officially launching today ahead of the 4th July General Election.
We’ve been quick off the mark in publishing this just two weeks and two days after the election was called.
It’s a UK General Election and Education is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, of course, but the EIS believes that Scottish MPs in Westminster have a responsibility to act in the interests of Scotland and its citizens in respect of all public services, including Education. Whether matters are devolved or not, values matter; and the Barnett consequentials matter.
In many ways, it was easy to turn this manifesto around so quickly- because we know what we stand for.
Our Union democracy is strong. Our decisions are soundly rooted in strong principles and values and they don’t change depending on what way the wind’s blowing.
We know that under-investment in Education in the here and now is a massive error of political judgement. Politicians need to see as we do that the cost of a few million in savings in the short term will be massive in the lives of the young people whose futures hang by a thread –the young people for whom school and their teachers are a safety net.
The human cost of under-investing in Education should be unconscionable to people who say that they’re in politics because they want to work for a better society.
Too often, though, our politicians appear to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. So we need to go on trying to convince them to invest properly in Education today because it’s the right and socially just thing to do. And because significant and sustained investment now will deliver huge long-term savings on health, on employability and on criminal justice for decades to come. It should be a no-brainer.
So, today, in launching this manifesto, we urge all political parties and General Election candidates to stand up for quality education, for workers’ rights, for peace, for equality and for climate justice, alongside the EIS.
Let’s see what you’re really made of.
And we encourage all voters- teachers, support staff, the parents and carers and families of our young people, and all who care about quality education, to cast their votes with the EIS vision of quality education firmly in their sights.
Today in launching this manifesto, we encourage all to stand up with us, stand up for us… stand up for quality education.