The key strands of our Better Deal for Scotland’s Teachers campaign are wellbeing, workload and pay.
Teacher wellbeing is often largely impacted by pupil behaviour and NASUWT has undertaken further work in this area recently:
-
directly raising the matter of violence and abuse in schools with the First Minister in July;
-
working with the Scottish Government to develop the National Action Plan on Relationships and Behaviour which, after much delay, was finally published on 15 August;
-
working with the Scottish Government to develop its Mobile Phones in Schools Guidance, which was also published on 15 August;
-
working with the Scottish Government on the production of the new Gender-based Violence Framework, published last term, which should now be embedded into the day-to-day work of schools.
We will work to help embed the National Action Plan on Relationships and Behaviour, particularly its recognition that there need to be serious consequences for serious misbehaviour, up to and including exclusion. NASUWT advice on this, and on the Scottish Government’s Mobile Phone Guidance, is on the right/below.
Jenny Gilruth, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, has herself said that ‘violence in Scotland’s schools is unacceptable’ and members are strongly encouraged to report all incidents of violence and abuse and to contact their local NASUWT Representative or the Scotland National Centre if such incidents are not being appropriately addressed.
On workload, NASUWT continues to pressurise the Scottish Government and COSLA to progress the promised reduction in class contact time, which was part of the SNP manifesto for the last Scottish Parliament elections and was included in the Programme for Government for this Parliament.
We also met with the Cabinet Secretary earlier this year and outlined some of the unnecessary bureaucracy in schools around forward planning, assessment, monitoring/tracking and school improvement plans and sought her support in encouraging local authorities and schools to address this.
On pay, all teaching unions agreed to the revised pay offer of 4.27% across all SNCT pay points for 2024/25.
Your feedback
If you require a response from us, please DO NOT use this form. Please use our Contact Us page instead.
In our continued efforts to improve the website, we evaluate all the feedback you leave here because your insight is invaluable to us, but all your comments are processed anonymously and we are unable to respond to them directly.