TEACHERS' leaders have accused councils of interfering in a ballot on future working conditions in Scottish schools.
The accusation comes after the Convention Of Scottish Local Authorities, the umbrella body for councils, wrote to its members questioning information about the ballot provided by teaching unions.
Teachers are being offered pay increases of 1% this year and 1% next year, but the deal will only go ahead if they vote in favour of separate changes to their conditions.
Moves to improve the pay for supply staff - whose payments have been cut, leading to staff shortages - will also only go ahead if the changes to working conditions are accepted. The ballot closes on October 21.
In its letter to councils, Cosla said that "regrettably" the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union had "left out some essential detail to inform its members of the implications of their vote".
It said: "The danger is the EIS has muddied the waters and failed to clearly advise its members that their pay award .... is contingent on a yes vote.
"It is crucially important the teaching workforce has the full information available when participating in the ballot."
However, Larry Flanagan, EIS general secretary, accused Cosla of "impertinence".
He said: "The EIS has always been committed to a ballot of members on these proposals, as the management side is well aware.
"The EIS was very clear - in the ballot materials sent to members, on the EIS website, and in materials sent to schools - of the likely implications for the pay offer should members choose to reject the current ballot."
A Cosla spokesman said: "We, as employers, thought the EIS ballot material was misleading and did not make it sufficiently clear the vote was also a vote for the pay deal. We felt we had a responsibility to our employees to provide clarity."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article