EIS President Speech – Paul McEwan

Outgoing President Paula McEwan pledged to continue fighting the good fight in her AGM speech.

I’m sure every President must stand here and say, ‘What a year!’ and I’m sure that for every one of them it will have been true for their time and for their circumstance. I have had the privilege of travelling around the country listening to, collaborating with, and, on occasion, challenging the notions, ideas and preconceptions of our members from Early Years through to Higher Education.

There have been two main threads working through all of my work across this year.

Stand Up for Quality Education (a multi-coloured thread) launched at last year’s AGM, and it has been the slow burner that we knew it would be. Our Pupil Behaviour survey results and the subsequent government commissioned Behaviour In Scottish Schools Report justified our starting with the Pupil Behaviour strand, and we were right to listen to branches, reps and LA secretaries who needed time and space built in to liaise with their local authorities around our recommendations. And the ask is a consistent one – resource, resource, resource.

Education is key to so many things but without appropriate levels of targeted ringfenced, transparently allocated and spent funding, how can we possibly get it right for every child?

The other, not unrelated thread, that has spun through my Presidency is purple, and has EIS-FELA written straight through it. I spent many mornings in September and October on FELA picket lines across the country as they fought for their 2022 pay award. I have been back on those same picket lines twice more since then as they escalated their action through rolling, targeted and now sustained industrial action.

Shame on College Employers Scotland for allowing this action to escalate to this point and for, at times, gloating that it has gone on for so long. Shame on Graeme Dey, Minister for FE, who has been roundly missing in action and who seems to defend the practice of deeming by public sector bodies. Shame on Jenny Gilruth, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, who oversees the sector in her portfolio. Shame on three successive First Ministers who have been at the helm through this dispute and could have stepped in and resolved it at any point and didn’t. And shame on the Scottish Government for reducing the funding for our college sector.

If the new First Minister really wants to end child poverty, then he needs to get adults out of poverty too. Our First Minister needs to recognise that investment in education across all its spheres will bring a saving in the longer term. Invest in education now, and that includes in Further Education, you ease pressure on the health service, on the justice service, on adult social care and on so much more in the longer term.

Our national Executive Committee agreed to allocate £5M to support universal hardship payments for FELA members who are engaging in strike action, until the end of this term. That is what solidarity looks like and is a strong message of support from the national body.

FELA, your fight is our fight and as your ex-President, I will still be on your picket lines, I will bring the solidarity of the wider lay membership and we will be with you until this is resolved.

Paula McEwan

And now, a couple of wee personal highlights from my Presidential year.

One of the huge privileges of being an Office Bearer is becoming a trustee of the Gwen Mayor Trust. The Trust was set up to honour the teacher killed in Dunblane and offers primary school communities the opportunity to apply for funding towards a project that furthers arts, culture, music or sport in their school community. An eclectic mix of applications were considered, and as the funding is sent out we’ve had thank you letters and pictures sent.

Excitingly, though, we also got an invitation to attend an event so off I went in March to see Royston Primary’s drama group production of Peggy, the Pint-Sized Pirate. And what a treat!

A dozen or so pupils from P5 -7 performed their spectacular – I was sitting next to the gran of the actor who was playing Peggy and quite honestly, the glowing pride of that gran was worth the funding alone.

But wonderful as it was, that wasn’t my highlight of the afternoon….as a warm-up, the P1 – P3 talent show winners performed ahead of the main event and so we had some pint-sized performers too – a P3 boyband, a P2 soloist, and then, three P1s performing Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ – using Makaton. Just glorious!

Another personal favourite is at the opposite end of the age spectrum.

The Scottish Pensioner’s Forum held a parliamentary event in September to celebrate UN International Day of Older People and I had agreed to go along…and what a truly life-affirming experience it was! Campaigning pensioners from across the country meeting with a host of stakeholders to further their campaigning causes – some fights that I didn’t know needed to be fought – did you know you lose Carers Allowance when you start getting your pension? And some fights that we’re already fighting – pensions and 68 being too late.

And the SPF fight these fights all whilst recognising that any victory that they win most likely won’t benefit them at all but will leave the world in a better place for us. That clear vision, that selfless drive for social justice made my heart sing.

Union membership is not a spectator sport and solidarity is a verb. Trade Unionism is about what we do, not about what we say. The government could learn from us.

Look at their manifesto pledges from 2021 – promises to an entire electorate; their ideas, not ours; vote for us and we shall deliver:

• Contact time of 21 hours. (Still waiting)
• 3500 more staff in the system. (Teacher numbers falling)
• Free school breakfasts and lunches for primary school pupils all year and for all children in state-funded special schools. So far, Inverclyde are the only authority delivering on that, and only because of their own political choices, not because of government intervention.
• Provide every child with a device to get online and a free internet connection to support that – the narrative around that has changed, it hasn’t happened yet and they are now ‘reviewing delivery models’.
• Consultation upon consultation upon consultation on reform – Morgan, Hayward, Muir, the National Conversation – bringing recommendation upon recommendation – many of them the policies that the EIS brought to the table.
• The National Behaviour Action plan – again, much of it brought to the table by EIS and driven by our member survey – but words on a page with nothing to back them up. No resourcing to allow us to act on it.
• Instrumental music teachers were met with a pledge to mainstream music as a core subject and to ensure our IMTs GTCS registration – another tumbleweed moment.

The Cabinet Secretary was invited, and had accepted, an invitation to speak at our conference. In the week before the AGM, that plan was cancelled, due to ‘parliamentary process’ around the UK election.

And whilst a UK election is welcome, it is a pity that the Cabinet Secretary could not come here, stand in front of the representatives of almost 65,000 teachers and defend the Scottish Government’s record on education.

Our children and young people deserve better, our schools deserve better, and our members deserve better. We need action and we need it now. Not least in Glasgow.

Paula McEwan

The Cabinet Secretary’s original letter to Councils mandating that teacher numbers are maintained had already been roundly ignored and last week, in an updated letter, Ms Gilruth has stated that a ‘small reduction’ is ok – but ‘small’ by which measure? 2 teachers per school? 10 per cluster? 100 per authority?

Glasgow City Council had already axed 125 jobs for this session, another 172 jobs have been cut from August, with a further 278 earmarked to go over the next two years. Is that ‘small’ by the Cabinet Secretary’s measure?

450 teachers, almost 10% of the teaching workforce in three years, against a backdrop of 37% of our pupils with a recognised Additional Support Need, support and third sector funding cut to the bone, and violence and aggression a daily occurrence in up to 82% of our workplaces.

Glasgow colleagues, we stand shoulder to shoulder with you in your fight – because it will be our fight next.

I argued with myself about using the word ‘proud’ in this next section, I wasn’t sure it was appropriate, but I will, because I am – and it takes me back to that solidarity and that fight for social justice.

I am incredibly proud of our position on Palestine, proud of the statement we issued in October, proud of the representation we’ve had at demonstrations, and proud of the donations we’ve made to organisations working on the ground in Gaza brought by motions from our members and supported by EIS Council.

In our statement, we rightly condemned the October 7th attacks by Hamas, and we rightly condemned the disproportionate response that followed. That response was disproportionate when we released our statement in mid-October, but what we are seeing now – the decimation of infrastructure, attacks on homes and schools and hospitals, deliberate attacks on aid convoys with women and children accounting for over half of those killed – goes beyond disproportionate. It’s murderous. It’s barbaric. It’s inhumane.

We cannot, we should not, and we will not, be bystanders in this.

In conclusion, I’ll end where I started – what a year!

I will be eternally grateful to have been your President. As I make the move to ex-President, please don’t think I will go gently into the good night…..in the words and actions of P1 from Royston – ‘You’re going to hear me roar!’ (with Makaton signing).