Striking teachers held a rally outside Nicola Sturgeon's constituency office, as they seek a 10 per cent pay rise.
Around 80% of primary and secondary school teachers are part of the Educational Institute of Scotland, which submitted its claim for the rise over a year ago.
The pay increase they are asking for is below year-on-year inflation, which stands at 13.5%, but a deal has not been reached.
Following mass walkouts earlier this year, strikes have been announced for this week targeting key members of the Scottish Government.
Action has taken place in Perthshire North (John Swinney), Dunfermline (Shirley-Anne Somerville), and Clydebank & Milngavie (Ross Greer) as well as Nicola Sturgeon's Govanhill constituency.
Read More: Targeted school strikes get underway as union warns of exam disruption
On Thursday morning teachers and supporters gathered outside Ms Sturgeons' constituency office to reiterate their pay demands.
They handed over a letter to the outgoing First Minister, urging her to use her last month in office to keep her promise on education.
The letter to Ms Sturgeon continued: "We ask that you use this period to ensure a positive legacy in your constituency, your city, and your country by resolving our dispute."
EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said: "This escalation of action, targeted at politicians with the ability to end this dispute, has been necessitated by the continuing refusal of the Scottish Government and COSLA to offer Scotland's teachers a fair pay deal.
"We are taking this action reluctantly, and with a heavy heart, but after more than a year of waiting for an acceptable pay offer, Scotland's teachers have simply run out of patience.
"We want to see this dispute settled, and could call off further strike action immediately, if the Scottish Government and COSLA offer an acceptable pay deal."
Further national strikes will take place on February 28 and March 1, with 20 days of rolling strikes across different local associations from March 13 to April 21.
There will be futher targeted strikes from March 7 to 9.
Read More: New teacher pay offer only 'tiny baby steps' in the right direction says union
Councillor Katie Hagmann, COSLA resources spokesperson said: “Given the funding assurances received from the Scottish Government, Leaders submitted a fifth offer to the Trade Unions which was rejected.
“COSLA Leaders and Scottish Government are clear that it is in all of our interests, not least those of children, young people and families, to conclude the teachers’ pay negotiations as quickly as we can to bring back stability and certainty in our schools.
“Pay talks are continuing and we would appeal to our trade union colleagues to suspend their industrial action while these discussions are ongoing.”
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