AGM 2025 Address – General Secretary Andrea Bradley

We’re a union that takes every possible opportunity to push forward on the objectives that you as AGM delegates democratically determine and that means we barely stand still.

We strive to contribute to the efforts of the wider trade union movement here in Scotland as part of the STUC, in the wider UK as part of the TUC, and internationally.

We’re an outfit of many parts in our own right and at the same time we’re part of a large and complex internationalist movement.

While we have broad strategy set by this sovereign body of the AGM, we operate in a fast-changing and unpredictable political, geopolitical and economic environment and we try hard to not only keep up but to be on the front foot, where we can.

So we never stand still. We never stop.

Pay talks

Just after last year’s AGM, we were still pressing for a pay-deal for teachers so had numerous pay-related discussions and negotiations trying to get something over the line in time for a 1^st August settlement. It didn’t happen but that wasn’t for want of EIS pressure.

And it looks like this year, despite all the work to pin them down, COSLA and the Scottish Government are sailing close to the wind again – spending more time behind the scenes sparring with each other than putting everything they’ve jointly got into making a credible pay offer.

The Teachers’ Side claim for 6%, undifferentiated and above the rate of RPI inflation to continue pay restoration for teachers couldn’t be any more straightforward. And of course, there’s room for negotiation on the figure that we finally settle at.

But COSLA’s initial offer of 3% was way off the mark.

A below-RPI inflation settlement would take us backwards, not in the forwards direction that we need to go if we’re to build on the modest ground recovered through last year’s pay award that COSLA noted in the letter of offer was ‘a first step towards restoration in the value of teachers’ pay’.

Colleagues, this shouldn’t be hard: the claim’s for 6%, 3% was rejected and RPI’s at 4.5%. P4 could work out what a possible settlement figure could be…

International solidarity

At July’s EI World Congress, the President and I spoke in the main debate. Allan on education funding and I spoke in support of an Emergency Motion calling for immediate humanitarian intervention and compliance with international law in the face of widespread starvation in Gaza following Isreal’s Raffah Ground Invasion. I spoke of the EIS’s stand for human rights, for workers’ rights, and children’s rights, as well as for peace and justice for the people of Palestine. If we don’t stand up for these rights, I asked, who will?

With the atrocities in Gaza having reached new and previously unthinkable depths of inhumanity, and the UN saying just a couple of days ago that Gaza is worse than a hell on earth, as a union we’ll keep speaking up no matter the efforts to silence us. We’ll speak up for an end to the annihilation of a people. We’ll speak up for justice; we’ll speak up for a just and lasting peace for as long as it takes to come.

Home priorities

The UK Government needs to get its priorities right. If it really wants to protect its citizens and our society, investment in public services and social security for social cohesion is how you do it. Tanks and bombs and submarines are weapons of destruction that we don’t need more of-weapons that could cost us much more than the money we spend on them no matter what the warmongers say.

Welfare not warfare is what people need and deserve!

Let the UK Government turn their efforts and their spending power to the fact that children UK wide don’t have enough to eat, or to wear, don’t have enough heat and power in their homes… and more so if they’re part of a family that has more than two children. At TUC Congress, we put a question about the UK Government’s unwillingness to abolish the Two-Child Cap directly to the Prime Minister. We weren’t the only ones asking that question but we added our voice loudly to the rest, and pressure on the UK Government continues to mount to scrap this callous cap.

The EIS can rightly be proud of our longstanding commitment to challenging poverty wherever it stems from and of our utter determination to keep challenging the political decisions that cause it.

Countering extremism

The prominence of the far right isn’t a flash in the pan- social inequality and economic conditions are a breeding ground for racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and fascism. History teaches us that. So, there’s a lot to be done to push back against the far right, to offer political education for our members and to support them to educate our students on misinformation and disinformation… And government needs to do its bit too by creating time and space in the curriculum for quality learning and teaching that will equip or students with the knowledge, skills and attributes to protect themselves from the dangerous influences of the far right and properly support the teachers who’ll be in the front line delivering that vital education.

Stand Up

Two years ago – right here- we launched the Stand Up for Quality Education Campaign.

We launched it determined that we wanted to up the ante after more than a decade of fruitless discussions about crippling workload, not enough ASN provision and rising levels of violent and aggressive behaviour in our schools.

And that same workload making teachers unwell and turning prospective entrants to the profession in other directions. A plethora of promises that  raised false hope on class size reduction, on resources for inclusive education, on tackling bureaucracy, on class contact time reduction layers and layers of jam tomorrow but tomorrow never coming…

Every day teachers are being let down, children and young people let down, communities and, in fact our whole society is being let down when we consider the power of education and investment in education for the common good- for social justice, for peace, for democracy.

That might lead some to be downhearted, dejected, defeated… Not this Union, not the EIS.

We don’t lie down when the times get hard and the going gets tough.

We say what needs to be said and two years ago, we launched this campaign determined to stand up and turn up the heat on government and employers to try to get them finally, finally, to do the right thing and up the investment in Scottish Education as the only real way to address the manifold and interrelated issues that have been making the professional lives of teachers difficult…miserable even… and ultimately unsafe and unhealthy, dangerous actually, for years.

And that have been underserving our children and young people, particularly the most disadvantaged.

Urgent though the issues are, we were clear that the SU4QE Campaign would be a long-range, slow-burn campaign. We’re trying to leverage millions and millions in additional funding for Education.

Workload & ballot

And we’ve been pressing hard on workload.

We made hay with the publication of the independent research on workload that was presented to the AGM last year. We met with the Cabinet Secretary on it who after some initial performative scepticism admitted that it was compelling evidence that workload was an issue that needs fixed.

Meeting after meeting we’ve highlighted the evidence, underscored the issues.

Media appearance after media appearance, letter after letter to the Cabinet Secretary and the First Minister.

Final deadline set, final deadline missed, dispute declared, more meetings and still no proposal as to how the manifesto commitment would be implemented or any simple agreement that, while it might be taking them a while, the 90 minutes will go to the preparation and correction component of the contract.

We’ve compromised on timescales, we’ve said we can compromise on phased implementation but the use of the time for preparation and correction is an absolute red line.

We’ve said that from Day 1 of talking about this manifesto commitment.

Patience isn’t infinite and neither is the amount of time that teachers can give to their work away from their own families- their own children, their own partners, their own parents and their own friends.

So, we have come to the point where we must escalate this dispute. Where we must ask our members to stand up and have their votes counted on workload in an indicative ballot.

The time is now for us to use our industrial might to fight on workload and to push back on the conditions that are making too many of you and your colleagues miserable- some of you ill.

It’s time for us to deploy another facet of our democracy and open a consultative ballot on workload. If the meetings haven’t managed to shift the will of government and employers to act in the interests of Fair Work, if all the evidence hasn’t convinced them, then it comes down to our industrial strength as a trade union to leverage fairer workload terms for teachers in Scotland.

This is an edited extract of the General Secretary’s speech. Text of the entire speech is available at: www.eis.org.uk/meetings-and-events/agm2025