Teachers' Pay
The first item of business is a statement by Mr Sam Galbraith on teachers' pay. The minister will take questions at the end of his statement, so there should be no interventions during it.
I would like to set out for Parliament the decision that I have taken relating to future professional conditions of teachers and give further details of the independent inquiry that I am establishing.
My first priority is the quality of education received by our children. I recognise that that priority is shared by teachers. I have paid tribute to the outstanding quality and commitment of teachers and I do so again.
It is one of my objectives to raise the professional status of teachers. There is a need for a fresh look at conditions of employment as part of a broader approach to restore teachers to their proper place in society. In order to achieve that, teachers must be willing to accept a degree of change. It is reasonable to expect similar flexibility and openness to change to that which has been shown by other professions and other local authority groups.
Local authority employers have recognised for some time the need for change in teachers' conditions. Many in the teaching profession have acknowledged that the present approach to hours of work and duties is a barrier to change and improvement. Despite this, the arrangements for discussing these issues have produced stagnation rather than progress.
Negotiations designed to lead to change failed in the early 1990s. Discussions on possible changes began again with the millennium review set up under the Scottish Joint Negotiating Committee for Teaching Staff in School Education in May 1997. The present negotiations started after the millennium review reported in September 1998. With the Educational Institute of Scotland ballot result announced last Friday the negotiations have reached an impasse.
I must emphasise that this offer did not come from the Executive. We did not formulate the offer; we did not put it on the table. It was the product of discussions between the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the teaching unions. I am here neither to support it nor to reject it.
It has been suggested that more money would automatically lead to a solution. I do not believe that money is the real issue. The local authority offer would have given the 18,000 teachers at the top of the unpromoted scale an increase of 17.3 per cent by 1 April 2001. The average increase across all grades would have been 14 per cent; no teacher would have got less than 11 per cent. The biggest increases would have come next year, not in 2001. All this is against the background of low inflation; inflation fell to 1.1 per cent in August.
Let me emphasise that the Executive was prepared to play its part in helping authorities to fund the settlement. The total cost of the deal would have increased the pay bill by £180 million by 2001-02. Given the level of inflation, there was generous provision for teachers' pay in the financial settlement for local government. However, we had told COSLA that we were prepared to be flexible beyond that to help the authorities. We had guaranteed an additional £8 million to COSLA prior to the last stages of their negotiations to help achieve a settlement. Money was available for the genuine modernisation of teachers' pay and conditions, on top of the additional resources that are already going into our schools.
Teachers have voted comprehensively against those proposals. They have every right to do that. My responsibility now is to find another way forward in order to deliver greater professionalism and flexibility, higher standards and better education for our children. Despite two years of discussion, for the second time this decade the current mechanism has failed to deliver a suitable package that is acceptable to teachers and that recognises their professional status and commitment. Clearly, the current arrangements do not work.
That is why I have decided that—to break the logjam—I will do two things. The first is to bring forward proposals to remove the statutory basis of the SJNC. That should come as no surprise. I made it clear to both sides at the outset that, should the discussions fail, the SJNC could not continue. It is an archaic piece of bargaining machinery that has demonstrably failed to address the need for change. It is inflexible because its agreements have the force of law and cannot be changed without further agreement. It has also established a wide-ranging remit over matters
which properly belong either to local management or, as in the case of class sizes, to this Parliament. I take the view that the laws of the land should be made here in Parliament, not in a negotiating committee. I believe that it is necessary to make this change to allow the proper consideration of terms of employment for the teaching profession.
At the same time, I am establishing an independent committee of inquiry. It will be asked to advise on what changes to the structure of teachers' conditions of employment, including pay, are required to meet the needs of the new millennium, and also to recommend a future approach to determining further changes to those conditions of employment. Its remit—a copy of which I have placed in the Scottish Parliament information centre—is wide and will allow all the issues that have arisen in the recent negotiations to be considered objectively on the basis of evidence.
I emphasise that I have no preconceived view of what the inquiry should recommend. I expect it to be fair, balanced and impartial. I believe that this is the way to address the very difficult issues that have arisen. I have asked the inquiry to report by May next year so that its conclusions can influence next year's negotiations. However, I consider that it is right that the SJNC is left with the final task of resolving the question of any pay agreement for 1999. That is its responsibility and I call on both sides to work out a realistic approach that will avoid any disruption in the classroom.
Finally, I turn to the chairmanship and membership of the inquiry. Today I will place in the information centre details of those who have agreed to serve.
The chairman will be Professor Gavin McCrone. He will bring to this inquiry long experience of economics, management and public administration. Although he has considerable university teaching experience, I have deliberately chosen someone who has no involvement in the school system in order to underline the objectivity with which this task should be approached.
Members will include a secondary and a primary head teacher, a local authority chief executive, a personnel director from a major business based in Scotland, the chairman of the Scottish School Boards Association and an academic with wide experience of pay and employment issues. One further member with a private sector or professional background will be appointed after discussions with the chairman. The inquiry has access to advice from a director of education and from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools and it will be supported by a well-resourced secretariat.
I am confident that with this mix of skills and experience the inquiry will be able to bring fresh thinking to these problems and to recommend solutions that will command general support. It is in everyone's interest to see the inquiry succeed, and I invite this Parliament to wish it well. I commend it to this Parliament.
I begin by expressing my regret that the minister has not opted to bring these proposals for proper debate and decision by this Parliament, but has instead opted to hide behind a ministerial statement, giving little opportunity for scrutiny. It is for that reason that I give notice that the SNP intends to use its Opposition debate, next Thursday, to give this Parliament the opportunity to hold the Executive to account for its handling of this issue.
I ask the minister to address the following points. First, given that there is a parliamentary committee structure that includes an education committee, how can he justify the additional and substantial cost to the taxpayer of setting up another so-called independent committee? Why does the minister prefer a hand-picked committee to our own parliamentary committee?
Secondly, how can the minister argue, as he has done in his statement, that the proposed committee will be independent, when he has already said that he is prepared to predetermine its conclusions? He said in his statement that he has decided to remove the statutory basis from the SJNC. What if—and let me hypothesise—the committee decides, after an inquiry, that the current impasse is not the result of defective negotiating machinery but, as the majority of people in Scotland believe, the result of a defective offer? It was an offer that, I note with interest, he was not prepared to support, even though he expected teachers to vote for it in the recent ballots.
My final point relates to resources. Notwithstanding the minister's comments about resources, no one in Scotland doubts that it was a lack of money that was responsible for a pay offer that barely preserves the current position of teachers over a three-year period, that does nothing to tackle the problem of pay erosion, that led to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities finessing the proposals for structural change to a point at which they were unworkable, and that led to a proposal that would put 100,000 children in Scotland into bigger classes. Given that the proposed committee will be bound by the same financial constraints as COSLA, will we not end up in the same position in May that we are in now: faced with the hard fact that the only way to break the logjam—to use the minister's words—is by providing additional resources?
Finally—
I think that makes two
finallys.
Is it not the case that today's proposal has little to do with solving this dispute and everything to do with the short-term objective of getting this problem off the minister's desk?
I am sorry that Miss Sturgeon was once again unable to show any generosity in her response to my statement. I am also surprised that she objects to the fact that I have brought a statement to this Parliament. I would have thought that that was part of the normal democratic process. I hope that she will become accustomed to the normal process of democracy. She is perfectly entitled, in her own time, to have a debate on this matter, and we would welcome that.
She asked why we could not leave all this to the committee on which she sits. This is an extremely complex and difficult matter, which will take up a considerable amount of time and a great deal of expertise. I do not think that it is the role of parliamentary committees to carry out that scrutiny.
I was also asked why I abolished the SJNC. It is important to recognise that I am abolishing the statutory basis of the SJNC. The reason I am doing that is that the current system simply has not worked. It is no good saying, "Well, if the offer had been better, the machinery would have worked." The problem with the machinery is that it has never brought an offer that could be acceptable—that would recognise teachers' professionalism and that would allow us to enhance that professionalism. There are all those teachers in Scotland who are doing a great job, working more than their contracted hours, but we do not have a system that allows us to reward them. The SJNC has singularly failed teachers, and I think that it is a good idea to get rid of it.
Sorry, Margo, much as I love you, you will have to ask me a question—and make it a nice one, please.
We cannot have interventions in the middle of answers.
Miss Sturgeon talked about the money—I wish she would listen to what I say before she writes out the questions that she is going to ask me. I explained the offer in some detail: it is an across-the-board 15 per cent over three years; inflation is currently 1.1 per cent. I am not here to get into the rights and wrongs of it, but is Nicola saying that that is an unreasonable offer?
She raised the old chestnut of class sizes. I think class sizes should be decided here and not by the SJNC. I am not here to justify the offer, but one thing Nicola forgot to mention is that part of it, along with the composite class sizes, is that next year the reduction of all classes up to S2 to classes of 30 or less would begin. Nicola either did not know that—so she has not read the offer—or she conveniently forgot it. Either way it shows her in a bad light.
As members will have heard, the issue is going to be debated next week. We have only 15 minutes left for short questions and answers.
I see myself as a generous chap so I welcome the minister telling us officially, at last, what he intends to do. There have been a number of other opportunities to do so, not least at the Education, Culture and Sport Committee.
He is Labour's third education minister in two years. Is he aware of his predecessors' criticisms of the possible abolition of the SJNC? Since he is adopting a policy that the Conservatives have put forward for more than two years, I would be happy to share a poke of chips with him so that he can hear and adopt more of our policies.
The Cubie committee has a budget of some £700,000 over six months and the McCrone committee—as no doubt it will be called—will take eight months to report. How much will it cost? Surely it would be better to use the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, which would be at no cost to the Scottish taxpayer and could bring forward a settlement that the minister would still be an arbiter for and could still bring to the Parliament. Since that is currently in the statute he could act immediately.
Mr Monteith makes great play of Conservative policies—I see one of their front bench spokesmen, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, is in favour of strike action. That is a policy that Mr Monteith might want to endorse. It is interesting that Tories are now in favour of strikes. I will expect them to be behind every worker, manning the barricades, at the picket lines, secondary picketing.
I see Mr Monteith has not risen to support that. He asked me how much the committee will cost. I do not know the answer, but it will have a wellresourced secretariat; I will write to him about that. It will be money well spent if it produces a solution. The purpose of the long-term independent committee of inquiry is not to find a solution to the current dispute, which has to go back to the SJNC to be resolved, but to do two things: to come up with the ideal terms and conditions for teachers and with a mechanism that prevents us getting into this problem year in, year out.
A friend of mine used to have a poster for a film on the wall. The film starred a
rather wild dog that turned out to be a good thing in the end and its name was Savage Sam. Is Savage Sam happy that his recent statements have been portrayed by the press as Galbraith taking on the teachers, as no doubt the statement today will be, as if he were engaged in a power struggle against teachers for the soul of Scottish education? Or does he agree with me that his aim is to create and work with a well-motivated, well- paid profession that feels it has a genuine opportunity to influence its own future and the direction of Scottish education?
I am worried that, when the offer was given, teachers were absolutely right to throw it out. The restructuring proposals—I am not talking about the money—would have ripped the heart out of Scottish education and out of current schools management structures, and would have replaced them with something untried, untested, half-baked, nebulous and deeply demotivating to the majority of middle management in our schools.
Order. We must have a question, Ian.
The question is, "Does he agree with me?" [Laughter.] As I was going to say, there was never the slightest suggestion of real consultation with the people involved: the senior teachers, principal teachers and even head teachers, whose organisation also threw the proposal out, where it belonged.
Ian Jenkins is quickly learning how to make a statement while turning it into a question. You and I, Presiding Officer, are ourselves skilled in those methods.
I am genuinely sad about the way in which the dispute has been portrayed. It has never been my intention to take on teachers. In fact, I went out of my way, right from the start of my period as minister, to change the language and what was to be included in documents, and to offer the olive branch. I did that for a simple reason: without teachers, we cannot deliver our high-quality education. I genuinely believe that the vast majority of teachers do an outstanding job, and I thank them for that.
I am trying to find a solution, and I am just sorry that that has been portrayed otherwise. The problem that I have with the current arrangement is that it has failed to deliver for teachers. Once again, we have had three years of negotiations and have come up with an unacceptable package. How can we allow a system which results in that to persist? I want a system which recognises teachers and which values the high-quality work that they do. I hope that what I am doing is portrayed as that.
I wish to endorse the minister's hope that there will be a settlement this year, to avoid any disruption to our children's education. Does the minister agree that any settlement under the present system is likely to leave teachers in Scotland worse off than their counterparts elsewhere, and that some method is needed to ensure that the worth of Scottish teachers in our society is properly recognised? Will the minister, in his deliberations on the negotiating committee's eventual recommendations, consider a future for collective bargaining—albeit, as he has said, without a statutory basis—that is available to workers in the public sector?
I do not prejudge what the negotiating committee may come up with. They might propose a system of collective bargaining. That cannot be on a statutory basis in the common sense: my view is that the laws of this land should be made here and not by a negotiating committee. It is a matter for the SJNC, and I do not want to give it any steer on that line.
Hugh Henry is right. The SJNC has allowed teachers to fall behind their English counterparts— its members should think about that.
I wish to address the membership of the new committee. On the list are a local authority chief executive—
Let us have a question straight away, please.
Fine. Can the minister give an assurance that the vacant post will be filled by a representative from the unions, or is the Labour party now as hostile to the unions as the Tories are?
I understand that the Tories are now on the union side. They want them to go on strike. I would point out that the Confederation of British Industry is not represented either. We tried to get a balanced committee, representing everyone. The other member will be decided by the chairman, in consultation with myself.
I call Helen Eadie.
I withdraw my question, because Hugh Henry asked it.
Wonderful. I will take Dennis Canavan's question.
Does the minister seriously think that he knows better than 98 per cent of Scottish teachers? Does he not realise that his mishandling of the issue is a recipe for conflict? What is not required is the setting up of another so-called independent inquiry that could go on for many months; rather, a fair negotiated settlement within the SJNC system is urgently
required, one that would be in the best interests of teachers and of the children in our schools. They deserve much better than the mixture of arrogance and intransigence emanating from the minister.
Thank you, Dennis, for your usual comradely language.
Once again, Dennis gets the matter confused. I am not arguing about the rights and wrongs of the offer. After three years, we have again come up with an offer that is completely and utterly unacceptable to teachers. How did we get into that position? What on earth are we doing, upholding a system that, after three years, produces an offer that is unacceptable to teachers and does not recognise their position? Surely the system simply does not work. What we need is a change to a system that produces a settlement that is fair, that recognises teachers and that teachers want. The current system does not deliver that. Dennis should recognise that and stop hanging on to the past.
Irrespective of what the committee of inquiry may or may not recommend, will my comrade the minister reassure the Parliament that the Executive will stand by the principle of a national agreement on pay and conditions for teachers? The agreement should apply evenly across Scotland and should be achieved through collective bargaining by, on the one hand, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which is the employer, and, on the other, the teachers' unions.
Without giving the committee a steer, my answer is an unequivocal yes.
The minister said that he had no preconceived idea of what the outcome of the inquiry should be, while some dubiety has arisen recently over the outcome of the Cubie inquiry and whether its recommendations will be implemented. Will he give members a guarantee that, whatever the outcome of the inquiry, he will honour it—in particular, if that outcome is in line with or exceeds teachers' current demands?
May I explain again that the committee is charged with two tasks. The first is the consideration of a suitable package of terms and conditions for teachers. The dispute will have to be settled this year, within the SJNC system, but we will certainly recommend that the committee consider the correct structure for pay and conditions for teachers. The second task is the consideration of formal arrangements for progress in future years.
We will examine the committee's recommendations when they are passed to us. I am sure that all members will have a view on those arrangements and will wish to discuss the matter at that time.
Does the minister agree that everyone in education recognises that there is a need for change, as the debate has been going on for a long time? They welcome the opportunity that the committee gives to all parties—to political parties in the chamber and to everyone in education—to contribute constructively to a satisfactory outcome.
I agree with Des McNulty's comments. I wish to re-emphasise that I am trying to deliver a system that recognises teachers' professionalism and rewards them for the job that they do. I hope that the committee will recommend solutions that will address that.
I suspect that the reality is that the Executive was relieved that the teachers voted the pay deal down. We should examine the figures. We are told that the pay bill was £180 million and that the minister had offered an additional £8 million. The reality is that the gap was £14 million. Would the Executive have come up with the extra £6 million to finance the pay deal, had it been accepted, or would classroom assistants have been sacrificed instead?
I hope that the member was listening to what I said as I went through my statement. The cost of the pay deal was £187 million. We put in £8 million simply to deal with the immediate position. Mr Crawford was in COSLA and knows the reality of the situation. While I know his views on the settlement, I suspect that they are not what he expressed today. Mr Crawford should be very careful what he says on this. He has been heard around the corridors of power in local government.
We always made it clear that we were willing to be flexible in the future and to help fill the gap. The local authorities would have to find some efficiencies, but we were certainly prepared to be flexible. On that subject, I hear that Mr Crawford's party leader now plans to find tuition fees from efficiencies. Splendid. There we are then.