Scottish teachers ballot over excessive workload

The EIS Scottish education union has launched a consultative industrial action ballot after its survey of more than 11,000 teachers found that almost half are working the equivalent of an extra day a week to keep on top of workload.

And one in 10 are working two extra days per week, unpaid, due to excessive workload pressures.

The union says the ballot was prompted by the failure, on the part of the Scottish Government and the COSLA employers’ organisation, to deliver an SNP 2021 manifesto commitment to reduce teacher class contact time as a means to reduce excessive workload.

“Teachers have waited more than four years for this promise to be delivered, while workload pressures on teachers have continued to soar,” said EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley.

Persistent, excessive workload demands are being placed on teachers at all grades and at all stages of their careers. “This has serious health, safety and wellbeing implications for teachers, and is contributing to a worrying upward trend in stress-related illness throughout the teaching profession,” she commented.

“Having teachers who are overworked and stressed is in no-one’s interest, neither teachers themselves or their families, nor the young people learning in our schools.”