Created on: 17 Feb 2025 | Last modified: 19 Feb 2025
This bulletin provides detail on recent work being undertaken at the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT - the tripartite negotiating body comprising of Scotland's teaching unions, COSLA and the Scottish Government. National terms and conditions for teachers and associated professionals are contained on the SNCT website).
EIS members will be aware that despite consistent effort on the part of the Teachers' Side of the SNCT, there has still been no progress made towards the Scottish Government's commitment to reduce class contact time to 21 hours. In a statement to the Scottish Parliament on 10th December 2023, the Cabinet Secretary for Education promised that work would be pushed forward "at pace" to bring a proposal to the SNCT in order to implement the reduction in class contact time. In a joint statement released the same day, both COSLA and the Scottish Government committed to making "meaningful progress" on reducing class contact time.
In response to both statements, the Teachers' Panel of the SNCT set a deadline of 3rd February 2025 for a proposal to be made and reiterated again that the resulting time from the reduction in class contact time must be allocated to weekly preparation and correction time.
Despite assurances in public statements by the Cabinet Secretary in the weeks leading up to the deadline, no proposal was intimated to the teachers' side of the SNCT on 3rd February or in the days since. The EIS Salaries Committee met on 6th February, before a full meeting of the SNCT Teachers’ Panel held on 7th February 2025. Due to no proposal having been forthcoming, a formal dispute on the matter was lodged directly following the meeting of the Teachers' Panel.
A meeting of the SNCT Joint Chairs will take place this week, on Wednesday 19th February, in response to the lodging for the formal dispute. Both the use of the time resulting from the reduction and implementation of the class contact time commitment will be discussed.
Unsustainable workload continues to impact on the daily lives of teachers, with independent research commissioned by the EIS last year showing that teachers are regularly working over 11 hours in their own time, unpaid, each week, with the majority of this time being used to prepare learning, teaching and assessment activities and to provide feedback on pupils' progress.
The EIS remains completely clear that the realising of the commitment to reduce class contact time, with the time allocated to teachers for the 'preparation and correction' component of the contract, is essential in addressing unfair and unsustainable levels of workload.
The Salaries Committee met in late January and recommended to EIS Council the submission of a 6% pay claim for the year 2025/26. Council subsequently approved the claim and EIS representatives took this position to the SNCT Teachers' Panel. An undifferentiated 6% pay claim, for all SNCT salary scales and points, was unanimously agreed by the Teachers’ Panel and submitted formally to COSLA on Friday 14th February 2025.
Reversing the erosion of Scottish teacher pay since 2008 remains a key goal for the EIS. With inflation currently sitting at 3.5% (RPI), household costs continue to rise. As such, the Salaries Committee is committed to ensuring that another step forward in pay restoration is achieved through a pay settlement in time for the implementation date of 1st August 2025.