Heather Hughes
Outgoing President Heather Hughes delivered a wide-ranging address that touched on many key issues facing Scottish education. This article is an edited extract – you can read the entire text of the President’s speech at www.eis.org.uk/Meetings-And-Events/AGM2022
It’s a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the first in person AGM for three years – made even more special as this is the 175th Anniversary of the EIS.
This has been another year dominated by online meetings for the EIS. I have met many of you here through online platforms but not in person until now.
But while things might be looking up to some degree, schools this year have remained challenging places due to the ongoing pandemic. To be clear colleagues, COVID isn’t finished with us yet.
It is not business as usual. We are in a recovery phase, and you know too well that school life is still far from normal.
For teachers and other school staff absences are still higher than pre-March 2020, but now stress related absences have overtaken obvious COVID driven absence. Much of this stress related absence is down to the huge pressures teachers have faced in dealing with the pandemic as well as the work-related stress that continues to come with the territory of being a teacher.
Teacher wellbeing needs to be factored into recovery plans. There has been yet another year of anxiety around COVID issues, uncertainty with SQA qualifications and continued Health and Safety concerns. Ventilation issues are far from resolved in many schools and Councils, and the withdrawal of compulsory mask wearing and provision for regular lateral flow testing by staff and young people were difficult adjustments to make for many after fighting so hard to have these mitigations put in place and when case rates were still high.
The EIS campaigned for the continuation of free testing for all school staff and young people, but it would seem that the cost of these vital mitigations come before the health and safety of staff and young people in schools.
Costs are the primary consideration when it comes to Long COVID too. Colleagues who have contracted long COVID are not being treated fairly with regards to sick pay and the categorisation. The EIS continues to fight on this issue on behalf of our members with COSLA and the Scottish Government through the SNCT.
Pay Attention
How quickly these two organisations have forgotten the selflessness of teachers; teachers who worked all hours of the day and night, totally adapting their teaching, often learning new skills to move to online forums; and volunteering in their droves to staff HUBS and teach the most vulnerable children and young people and children of other essential workers so that they could keep our vital services running in the midst of the crisis.
You went above and beyond doing your utmost trying to keep schools open for the young people you teach. As always you had their welfare at the centre of these selfless actions.
What was our reward for all these selfless interventions? A paltry pay rise for 2021/22 and an insulting offer of 2% after we launched our 10% pay claim for 2022/23. A pay rise which should have been settled by April the 1st this year!
We are in the worst cost of living crisis for 40 years. RPI Inflation is sitting at 11% and forecast to go even higher. Record high fuel prices, energy costs up 54% and food prices escalating with every shop.
A 10% rise in our pay barely covers inflation now and is nowhere near the restorative pay rise our members need and deserve.
We must and will win this campaign for a cost-of-living pay rise. Our employers and Scottish Government have been given notice that the teachers of Scotland, led by the EIS, will campaign, will organise, will march, and if necessary, will ballot our members for industrial action. Make no mistake colleagues if no reasonable offer is made, with your mandate we will vacate our classrooms. We demand this pay rise for ourselves, for our families and for the future of education in Scotland.
Let our employers and Scottish government see that we are serious in our pay campaign, and that they must come to the negotiating table with a credible offer if they are serious about ensuring the continuity of education by keeping schools open.
Our FELA colleagues are ahead of us in their fight for fair pay and we give them our full solidarity. Following a protracted campaign of industrial action involving both strike action and action short of strike action, they have now secured a better final offer of pay from Colleges Scotland Employers Association of a flat rated and consolidated £1000 uplift. EIS-FELA are balloting their members right now with a recommendation to accept.
We need a decent pay rise to stop the exodus of talented teachers and lecturers from the profession and to encourage our top graduates and students to join us.
Scotland needs teachers and lecturers. We have one of the most important jobs of all, educating and nurturing our next generations. We teach the knowledge, skills and attributes that make professionals in every field: those who care for us when we’re sick, disabled or old: those who build our roads, our houses, our hospitals and schools: and those who and those who entertain us with their songs and stories and art. Teachers teach our young people so that they’re able to participate in our democracy; so that they become the skilled workers, the wealth creators, the policy makers, the activists and culture creators.
We work with families, create responsible citizens who shape the Scotland that you and I are proud to be part of. Teaching is much more than just a job.
Additional teaching posts
A SNP manifesto pledge promised an additional 3,500 teachers would be in post during the life of the current parliament. We truly welcome this commitment.
But we must push to make sure that money to pay for these teachers is ringfenced by the Scottish Government. Any additional funding earmarked for additional teaching posts must be used for this purpose.
If we train these teachers, we must give them a permanent position at the end of their probationary year. What a waste of talent and investment if that is not the case. Worse still would be the lost opportunity to lower class sizes and contact hours which would benefit all those involved in education.
And let’s not lose either the highly qualified, highly skilled teachers we already have in the system. Not to secure them with permanent contracts after all those years of training and service is a disgrace and something that we’ll keep campaigning on. We need to have all shoulders to the wheel on Education recovery.
After the last two plus years we’ve lived through, teachers are exhausted. They feel downtrodden, and totally let down by government and employers.
We are the EIS, and we will stand together to fight on many fronts for ourselves and the young people in our care. We have many battles ahead of us but together we are strong. 175 Years Strong and we will continue to be the defenders and practitioners of an education system that Scotland should be proud of.
I can’t finish this address without mentioning the General Secretary Larry Flanagan.
You are aware that this is his last AGM after being in the role for the last ten years.
I wanted to say on all our behalf that we are grateful for all that he has done for us over the last ten years and before that in his role as Education Convener and activist.
He is leaving us stronger than he found us. He steered us to success in our 2018 pay campaign for 10% and kept us safe through the pandemic by tirelessly pressing on our behalf for health and safety mitigations.
His achievements are too numerous to outline here. As the President of ETUCE, he is continuing to utilise his unrivalled trade union skills of negotiation and communication. Council last month selected the new General Secretary who’ll be taking over from Larry in September. I’d like to formally congratulate Andrea Bradley on her successful appointment.
I know having the first ever female General Secretary of the EIS will keep us strong and grow us even stronger in the years to come.