Pam Currie of the EIS-FELA Executive explains the background to the national dispute with colleges over attempts to replace lecturers with lower-qualified, and lower-paid, staff.

EIS FELA representatives have warned that the sector faces a stark choice regarding instructor assessor roles and professional lecturers – and that the outcome will have implications for college students, who are some of our most vulnerable learners, as well as for wider Scottish education as a whole.

Members at Forth Valley College started industrial action last month in a fight against the downgrading of more than 30 lecturing roles to “instructors.” The new roles are on support staff terms and conditions with much more class contact time (hence minimal preparation time), major loss of pay immediately or when conservation ends and no entitlement to undertake the in-service teaching qualification (TQFE) based on the Professional Standards for Lecturers.

This comes just as the sector implements a key outcome of the 2017 college dispute and a long-held aim of the EIS-FELA – mandatory GTCS registration for college lecturers. Multi-agency working groups have been underway to deliver this for the past two years and registration pilots will launch in November 2020 at Glasgow Kelvin, Dundee and Angus and Forth Valley Colleges with the intention of extending registration to all qualified lecturers from August 2021 and to all lecturers in the sector by April 2022.

This means that no curriculum area, practical or non-practical, is safe from downgrading right across the country.

‘Former lecturers, now in ‘instructor’ posts at Forth Valley College, are seeing their roles being de-valued and essential teaching preparation time slashed, at a time when the GTCS registration project is striving to raise the profile of the quality of provision in Further Education across Scotland. In an unprecedented attack on Further Education and the professional role of college lecturers, Colleges Scotland (the umbrella body for college management) have said that they now expect to see this rolled out across the sector. At Forth Valley the intention is that all future posts will only be advertised as instructor grades. This means that no curriculum area, practical or non-practical, is safe from downgrading right across the country.

The use of instructor-assessors is not simply a question of budgetary constraint and costcutting; it is an attack on the fundamental nature of colleges and on working class education at a time when the inequities of the Scottish education system have already been laid bare by the August 2020 exams fiasco.

College education at its finest offers a route to engage young people and adult returners in learning – not simply learning “how to”, whether that’s cutting hair, balancing a budget or welding sheet metal – but the life-changing, life-enhancing opportunities we know as teachers and lecturers that education has to offer.

Learners on college programmes come from a diverse range of backgrounds and are often some of the most vulnerable students in education. Some come from areas of deprivation whilst others are disengaged and disillusioned with formal schooling and traditional school subjects. Some will have faced barriers to education, stemming from disabilities, ESOL, immigration status or poverty, while others only come back to college many years after leaving school. They need and deserve to be taught by staff who are professionally trained, qualified and supported in continuous professional development.

By threatening to replace highly qualified, experienced and professional lecturers with instructors, college management – and by their silence the Scottish Government – have made it clear that they do not value the role of professional lecturers in delivering such educational opportunities. This threatens to undermine and derail GTCS registration for lecturers at a time when the professional role of Scottish teachers is also threatened by the implications of Brexit and the Internal Market Bill.

In response, EIS-FELA have declared a national dispute and have launched an indicative ballot for industrial action. This is not a traditional dispute – it is not about pay or terms and conditions. Rather, it is a fight for the future of our profession and for the right of college learners to benefit from an education, not simply ‘instruction’, and to be taught by lecturers whose professionalism is recognised, supported and valued by all. We urge members to vote YES to industrial action.

Please show your support for college lecturers by signing our petition to defend the quality of further education in Scotland. www.eis.org.uk/content/FELAPetitionForm