SCOTLAND'S largest teachers' union has dismissed the latest pay offer from the government and councils as only "tiny baby steps" in the right direction.
The EIS said they had been asking for a “significant improvement” on the 5 per cent initially offered to most teaching staff.
However, the latest deal would amount to a 6% pay boost backdated to April 2022 and a further 5.5% from the start of the 2023 financial year.
READ MORE: EIS announce 22 more days of school strike action
General secretary of the EIS Andrea Bradley told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland on Wednesday: “I would say what’s been put through the media and subsequently put on the table for negotiation later this week amounts to a tiny baby step in the right direction rather than a significant improvement.”
She said the union’s salary negotiating committee will consider the figures on Wednesday morning with a decision on whether to push ahead with strikes planned for the end of the month, March and April.
The union boss also criticised the Scottish Government for sharing details of the offer with the before formally presenting them to the Scottish Negotiation Committee for Teachers (SNCT).
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon targeted in 'escalation' of teacher strikes
“Our members have not had a proper chance to look at this – I think the offer came in after 9pm last night when many of them would have been getting ready to go to their beds,” she said.
“Their first careful look at it will be probably as we’re speaking just now ahead of the meeting at 10am.
“I can absolutely assure you that our members will look very, very carefully and will take very, very seriously the terms of this offer and the way in which those terms have been shared with them.”
Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville insisted that the offer was “good and fair.”
She called for education unions to suspend ongoing strike action while the offer is considered.
“I think this is a fair deal,” she said.
“I appreciate it’s not the 10% that teaching unions wanted, but that is unaffordable, but I do think it’s a fair deal, and that’s why I’ve written to the trade unions asking them to put this new deal to the members.
“They asked for a new offer – the new offer is now on the table.”
READ MORE: Contingency plans in place as teachers set to strike over exams
Ms Somerville was asked where the £156 million for the new offer has come from.
She said: “We’ve managed to find a sum that we can increase the offer for this year and we’ve also put money on the table to help for the next financial year.
“The challenge that we’ve set ourselves is how can we improve when we had an already allocated budget.
“We’ve taken very difficult decisions to ensure that we’ve been able to improve their offer respecting the unions already rejected that (previous offer).”
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