Teachers are up to £6,000 a year worse off due to below inflation pay rises, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has said.
She said staff in many schools are now saying "enough is enough", as she highlighted the discrepancy between actual salaries and inflation-matching rises.
She raised the issue at First Minister's Questions after teachers signalled they could go out on strike unless action is taken on pay.
Members of the Educational Institute of Scotland union have voted in favour of balloting members on industrial action if an adequate deal on pay is not agreed.
Meanwhile, a survey from the union found nearly nine out of 10 teachers have seen their workload increase in the past year.
Ms Dugdale said: "Their workload has increased and fewer than half would recommend teaching as a career.
"There is a recruitment crisis with hundreds of vacancies, some of which will take up to six years to fill.
"And new figures reveal that some teachers are receiving up to £6,000 less than they should if their pay had risen in line with inflation."
Scottish Labour produced figures which show a classroom teacher at the top of the salary scale earned £28,707 in 2003, with pay rises taking the figure to £35,763 in 2016.
But the party said the salary should have risen to £41,652 if it increased with average yearly inflation of 2.9%.
Ms Dugdale added: "It is little wonder that teachers are saying enough is enough."
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "What we will continue to do is what we are doing, investing with local authorities to ensure that we maintain teacher numbers, putting more resources into the hands of headteachers to equip them to better respond to challenges they face in schools.
"The Deputy First Minister will continue to work to take the action to reduce unnecessary workload on the part of teachers - that is why the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland are already reducing and clarifying the guidance they provide to teachers."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel