Teachers announce 16-day strike action

Teachers are set to strike for 16 days in January and February over the continuing pay dispute.

The EIS, the largest teaching union in Scotland, said its members had been “forced into the escalation” of strike action.

It accused the Scottish Government and Cosla of showing “bad-faith” after earlier this week tabling a pay offer 30 minutes before the union’s committee was due to meet and giving the details to the press.

EIS members went on strike for the first time in four decades on Thursday after negotiations reached a stalemate.

The union is seeking a 10 per cent pay increase and claimed the offer on Wednesday was a “reheated five per cent offer”.

The Scottish Government said the offer represented a “a cumulative pay increase for the majority of teachers of 21.8 per cent since 2018”.

Teachers will strike in two local authority areas each day between Monday 16 January and Monday 6 February, starting with Glasgow and East Lothian.

Strike action which had already been confirmed for 10 and 11 January is still set to go ahead.

EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley said: “We have been forced into the escalation of this action by the lack of willingness to negotiate properly and to pay teachers properly, by a government that says it wished to be judged on its record on education.

“The judgement of Scotland’s teachers on the matter of pay is clear, with the first programme of national strike action that we have engaged in for four decades.

“It is now for the Scottish Government and COSLA to resolve this dispute, and prevent further strike action, by coming back to the negotiating table with a substantially improved pay offer for all of Scotland’s teaching professionals.”

The planned strike is as follows: