Created on: 26 Jun 2023 | Last modified: 09 Nov 2023
The EIS has today (Monday) hit out at North Lanarkshire Council’s notification to around 130 teachers late last Friday afternoon that they would be out of work after the summer break.
Without warning, around 80 Primary teachers and 50 Secondary teachers received emails last thing on Friday, stating that the Council was unable to offer temporary or Fixed Term contracts to them from August. The EIS has since received numerous emails from very distressed members who face the prospect of unemployment post-summer as the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite.
EIS General Secretary, Andrea Bradley, said, “The issuing of these notifications by North Lanarkshire Council, with no prior notice whatsoever, late on a Friday and within days of the summer holidays, has caused serious upset amongst the teachers affected. Instead of being able to start their well-earned summer break on a high, they are deeply anxious and worried about how they are going to cover the costs of food and housing as prices and mortgage rates and rents continue to soar. After years of study and training to become teachers, when class sizes are full to bursting, and when there’s insufficient support for children and young people with additional support needs, it is quite scandalous that highly qualified professionals face such casualisation and precarity.”
Ms Bradley continued, “While this particular case involves North Lanarkshire Council’s poor decision-making, precarity and lack of job security is endemic across Scotland as a result of serious under-funding of our Education system, first and foremost by the Scottish Government, but local authorities could be doing much more than they are too.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands of teachers, all over Scotland who are unable to progress in their lives because of lack of certainty that they will have a job from one week to the next. This is no way to staff a vital public service such as Education and it’s no way to treat workers in a country that aspires to be a Fair Work nation by 2025. The Scottish Government and local authorities need to stop playing politics with people’s lives and with our essential public services - our citizens deserve so much better.”