Teachers back strike action

Teachers across the Forth Valley have voted to strike in a dispute over teacher workload.

Members of the backed potential industrial action in a ballot.

The EIS trade union says ministers have failed to deliver on a pledge to reduce teachers class contact time to 21 hours per week.

The union's committee is meeting today to agree the next steps.

EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, “This is an overwhelming ballot result, which delivers a very clear mandate for industrial action by teachers over excessive workload. For five long years, teachers have been waiting for manifesto promises, made by the current Scottish Government prior to the last Holyrood election, on tackling teacher workload to come to fruition. With no real sign of delivery of those promises on reducing excessive teacher workload by recruiting 3,500 additional teachers while tackling teacher unemployment and zero-hours contracts, and reducing teachers’ maximum class contact time to 21 hours per week, teachers’ patience is clearly now at an end.”

“We are long past the time when these promises made to Scotland’s teachers should have been kept, honoured and delivered by the Scottish Government and local authority employers. They have previously jointly pledged to deliver these important commitments, but have since done little to ensure long-awaited improvements to the working conditions of teachers and the associated learning conditions of pupils. The EIS continues to offer the requisite solutions to the current workload dispute for agreement, without the need for industrial action. We hope that this ballot result will finally propel the Scottish Government and COSLA into action and serious negotiation to bring the dispute to an end after more than a year.”