The challenges in our schools

Scotland’s schools are currently under-funded, with serious implications for the learning experience of young people across the country. The damaging impact of the Covid pandemic is still being felt in our classrooms, with many young people still struggling to overcome the long-term impact this has had on their learning.

Schools were promised a whole array of additional resources to support young people in their education recovery. To all extents and purposes, this promised additional support has so far failed to materialise to any significant degree.

We currently have more young people with an identified Additional Support Need (ASN) in our classrooms than ever before. Nationally, more than 1 young person in 3 has ASN, with the figure even higher in some parts of the country. These young people need, and have a right to, specialist additional support – but too many are just not getting it.

Budget cuts have led to a sharp decline in the number of specialist staff available to support young people with ASN.

Budget cuts have led to a sharp decline in the number of specialist staff available to support young people with ASN. This is extremely frustrating for the young people concerned, and this frustration can lead to young people becoming ever-more disengaged from their learning.

Sadly, that frustration can also manifest itself in other ways – including violent incidents against other pupils or members of staff. Assaults on teachers – of course, not all of them committed by young people with ASN – are reaching epidemic proportions in our schools.

Workload for teachers is through the roof, with a growing number of teachers experiencing work-related stress and stress-related injury as a result. The combination of fewer staff, large class sizes, and the huge increase in the number of pupils with ASN are piling ever more workload onto our teachers.

Scotland needs more teachers in its schools to help address all of these issues. There was broad political consensus on this issue ahead of the last Scottish Parliamentary election, with each of the main Holyrood parties making commitments on education which included the recruitment of additional teachers.

Has the Scottish budget addressed the challenges?

The EIS expressed some cautious welcome of the support for schools outlined in the draft Scottish budget, which was outlined in the Scottish Parliament in early December. Prior to the budget, the EIS had called for a clear plan from the Scottish Government on how it planned to deliver its manifesto commitments to recruit 3,500 additional teachers and to reduce teachers’ class-contact commitments to a maximum of 21 hours per week.

Though neither of these issues were mentioned explicitly in the statement from Finance Secretary Shona Robison at Holyrood, a disappointing omission, closer analysis of the detail of the budget suggests that some long-awaited progress might yet be possible with the agreement of COSLA Leaders.

Commenting, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, “Although on the face of it a disappointing statement from the Finance Secretary, with only a very brief focus on Education despite its critical role in poverty reduction, on closer inspection, it would appear that there may yet be hope that the SNP government’s existing manifesto commitments to recruit 3,500 additional teachers during the term of this parliament, and to reduce teachers’ maximum class-contact time during this period, have not been completely abandoned.”

The commitment on the recruitment of 3,500 additional teachers is a vital step for our schools.

Ms Bradley added, “There was welcome mention of the challenging situation related to Additional Support Needs (ASN) provision in our schools, with the creation of a fund to provide teacher training in ASN support. While this is welcome, it does appear to be focused largely on the retraining of existing teachers, rather than the employment of significant numbers of additional teachers in our schools.

Whilst there is mention of supporting new teachers into the profession, our schools require sufficient numbers of them – a sticking plaster on a gaping wound will not deliver on the promise of ASN legislation, nor help close the poverty-related achievement and attainment gap. The Scottish Government and COSLA Leaders must work together to ensure that our schools have enough teachers to properly support the almost 40% of young people with additional needs, and the 60% who don’t.”

a sticking plaster on a gaping wound will not deliver on the promise of ASN legislation, nor help close the poverty-related achievement and attainment gap

Ms Bradley continued, “The commitment on the recruitment of 3,500 additional teachers is a vital step for our schools. This would lower class sizes, enhance support for young people with ASN, help to tackle the current rising tide of serious indiscipline and violence in our classrooms, and begin to address current crippling levels of teacher workload, that see teachers working a third of their contracted hours extra every week unpaid, such are the demands upon them.

“The reduction of class contact time to the promised 21 hours per week is critical to ensuring that teaching is an attractive and sustainable career option, and so the promise must be delivered swiftly.”

Ms Bradley added, “There were a number of positive elements in this budget that were explicitly referenced in the Finance Secretary’s statement, including some additional funding for Early Years, which we hope will include the recruitment of qualified teachers; money for school buildings; important initiatives to tackle the impact of poverty by removing the two-child benefit cap; and extra money to support breakfast clubs in schools.

“While these steps are very welcome, they stop short of further progress on commitments to expand universal free school meals, in line with Scottish Government commitments. Overall, the budget statement could have been clearer on the Scottish Government’s priorities for education but the coming discussions at Parliament and within COSLA should be enlightening as to the worth of past manifesto commitments and the promises made to Scotland’s schools, teachers, pupils, and to the Scottish electorate as a whole.”