Peter Lazenby
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SCHOOL exams in Scotland will be disrupted for the third time in four years unless Holyrood ministers come up with an acceptable pay settlement, the country’s biggest teaching union said today.
A Scottish government statement that it was up to teachers to suspend strike action to avoid exam disruption was firmly rejected by the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) as teachers staged the last day of the current wave of strikes.
The union is prepared for more action later this month and in March.
School strikes have rolled across Scotland, where Covid-19 disrupted exams in 2020 and 2021, with primary schools targeted in one wave followed by secondary schools in another, then strikes that have transferred from one region to another.
The call for a suspension of strikes came from Scotland’s Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somverville.
But EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley said in response that its members are running out of patience with the Scottish government and that the only way to avoid further disruption is for an acceptable settlement to be brought forward.
“This pay claim will have been on the desks of the Scottish government and Cosla [representing local authorities] for a year tomorrow; it was on their desks months before last year’s exam diet began.
“They’ve had 12 months to bring forward an acceptable resolution to this dispute and they haven’t yet done so,” she said.
Most primary and secondary schools in Inverclyde and Shetland were shut by strike action today, when Ms Bradley joined a picket line in Greenock.
The teachers want a 10 per cent pay rise, roughly in line with inflation: the Scottish government proposes a 5 per cent increase, with 6.85 per cent for lower-paid workers.
Ms Bradley said that the Scottish government could find the money for a fairer increase if it chose to do so, but that it had refuse to compromise over its 5 per cent proposal, which teachers have twice rejected.
Two days of national strikes will take place on February 28 and March 1, followed by rolling strikes between March 13 and April 21.
