Chamber and committees

I think that both resource funding and capital funding for universities have increased.

There is only one official here from the relevant directorate, convener, but we will come back to you on those points.

We had the result of the EIS ballot on Friday, and we have had the NASUWT ballot—neither met the 50 per cent threshold. I understand that the EIS is to reballot, although I am unclear whether the NASUWT has made public comment about doing so.

If I wanted to kid you on, I probably would not have asked for extra funding in the budget for pilots. I did not need to include that.

We need to pilot in order to learn what works best.

Yes. At that time, there were demands from the teaching trade unions to increase teacher pay—by huge amounts. Since 2018, the pay of classroom teachers has increased by 40 per cent. Those significant increases have cost the Government more than £800 million since 2021. We could not have forecast that situation when we came into power again in 2021. It is fair to say that that has slowed down the pace of progress.

The other factor, which is inherently linked, is that the teaching unions separate pay and conditions from their negotiations. In my view, if they want to force my hand—I want them to force my hand, because I think that this would make a huge difference—they should tell me that they want to include reducing class contact time in their pay claim. That will force my hand and that of local government, but that is not the approach that has been taken. We have seen teacher pay going up steeply. However, if you speak to teachers—I do that regularly, and I know that Mr Rennie does, too—you will hear that the thing that will make the difference is teaching conditions.

Some of the positioning in that regard has not helped—it has slowed down the pace of change. However, as I mentioned, we created the pot of funding last year to deliver on our commitment to have the right number of teachers in our schools, and, this year, we are funding pilots so that we can learn what works best. We are absolutely committed to moving forward on that, but the issue here is the resolution of the definition of teacher contact time and, of course, the teaching unions have a firm view on that.

I do not think that that is a fair characterisation. It is the case that—

I am not sure that I would agree with Mr Briggs’s characterisation of what I said—

The point that I was making is that the EIS separates conditions from pay so it negotiates those two things separately. If you want to force my hand, my view is that you probably should look at these things in the round. That has not been the position of the teaching trade unions.

I invite committee members to consider the real, substantive changes to teaching conditions that have taken place. Let us wind back to the McCrone agreement in 2001. I am not necessarily sure that there have been substantive changes to the improvements in teaching conditions since 2001. That is a problem, because wages are going up and up and up in teaching, yet, as the committee knows—I am sure that we will come to this—teachers are tired; they are burned out; and they need time to engage in reform. It is really difficult for me to unilaterally foist that on the profession when the way in which we arrive at a decision has to be through the SNCT, so I need local government, I need COSLA and I need the teaching unions. It is not a one-way street.

I have been very focused on trying to get progress in relation to reducing class contact. That is one of the reasons why I spoke publicly in November about all the plans that we have been working on, so that teachers could hear the opportunities that we are considering, including pretty radical opportunities, such as a four-day teaching week, but also issues around learning hours. I do not know whether this is something that the committee is interested in, but we see variance across the country just now in relation to learning hours. I do not think that that is good in terms of entitlement and equality. If you are a P1 pupil and you live in a certain postcode, you might get a different number of hours per week from someone who lives in another postcode. That affects your education, and I do not think that that is right. Having set out our stall in that regard, it is important that we have engagement with the SNCT.

Since my appointment, and long before that, the unions have been adamant in their view that the solution will come down to the use of teachers’ time. Currently, their non-teaching time is split between collegiate time, which involves departmental meetings and whole-school activities, and planning, marking and correction. Through my engagement with the SNCT, we have suggested that we look at updating some of the definitions in the SNCT handbook, which are rather old, because they date back to the days of McCrone. That might create a route forward for negotiation.

However, we have to negotiate. It cannot be me dictating as cabinet secretary, nor can it be the unions or COSLA dictating. We all have to come to the table with an open mindset in order to provide a resolution. That is the approach that I will be taking in the coming weeks to try to bring about that resolution.

Also, on Mr Rennie’s point, I want to get on with this, which is why there is money in the budget for pilots. We want to work with local government on how we roll that out.

Primary teachers currently cannot teach national qualifications subjects in secondary schools, because they are not qualified to do so. The GTCS would take a pretty dim view of that. I know that a number of primary school teachers—probably in Ms Dunbar’s constituency, although I have seen it in other parts of the north-east—are filling vacancies in secondary 1 to S3, which is the broad general education.

The GTCS’s view is that that needs to be supported with an appropriate qualification, and it absolutely, on a point of law, needs to be supported in that way in relation to the delivery of national qualifications. For example, a primary teacher could not teach national 5 English unless they had the appropriate qualifications to do so. The GTCS plays a key role in that regard. That was one of the points that came out of the meeting that we had two weeks ago, and we will be revisiting it in March, because officials are now urgently looking at what we can do in that space.

Another point on the retraining of primary school teachers is that they can become ASN teachers. All teachers are teachers of additional support needs, but we put extra funding into the budget last year, which has been protected for this year, specifically to enable local authorities to employ additional support needs staff. That is another opportunity for primary teachers to pursue. Also, pupil equity funding currently supports around 3,000 extra staff across the country, of which 700 are teachers.

There are a variety of routes for primary teachers who cannot find employment in that role. There are opportunities for them to pursue and, to go back to the points that Mr Rennie raised, we have created additionality to try to deliver on the expectations on reducing class contact time.