UNION leaders have warned that school exams face major disruption in an escalation of the teacher's pay dispute, claiming that political infighting is preventing a settlement.

The Herald has been told that teachers are already being asked to work to rule including stopping marking papers in anger at a failure to provide new money to fund pay increases since August, last year.

The Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association, which with 9,000 members represents a third of Scottish secondary teachers, has said that preparation for exams has already been hit by the current wave of strikes.

A national teachers' strike is scheduled on February 28 and March 1 which has followed 21 days of rolling strikes striking two local authorities every day.

Seamus Searson, general secretary of the SSTA said there is increasing anger that an end to the dispute is being lost amidst political infighting between the Scottish Government and the employers, the local authority group, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).

COSLA has expressed "deep concern" over this year's cash allocation from the Scottish government and warned of a significant funding gap.

But questions have also been raised over the £145m allocated by the Scottish Government to help maintain and expand the teaching workforce in this financial year as new census figures show that the number of full-time equivalent school teachers fell by 92 to 54,193.

Mr Searson said: ""We hope the government will come forward with money but we know COSLA has the money but chooses not to use that.

"The repurcussions of that is schools are closed, children are missing education and exams are coming up and the unions will be looking towards disrupting education further and that would have an impact on exams. None of us want to do it, but that is the one way people are going to get annoyed or upset is if exams are affected and that has serious consequences.

The Herald:

"There needs to be some sort of movement from employers and the government fairly quickly or we are into strike actions into Easter and beyond.

"And we are already in exam season in secondary schools preparing youngsters for exams, so they are already being impacted.

"The more strikes there are, the more impact they have on youngsters doing exams this year, all the seniors in S4, S5 and S6. Whatever damage has been done we just cannot continue in this vein."

Unions rejected a 5% pay increase, arguing for 10%, although the offer includes rises of up to 6.85% for the lowest paid staff.

COSLA has said that the the 10% claim was "unaffordable" while unions are angry that there has been no new money on the table since last August and no meaningful talks.

Mr Searson said the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the Scottish Government body responsible for accrediting education awards rely on teachers to deal with exams, including marking and he said they have to do out-of-hours work to complete that.

"Teachers are saying enough is enough, as they have lost pay because of the dispute, and they have lost money and are moving to a stage where they have to do something else. Looking at workload and exams, teachers work far more than the number of hours they are meant to work each week. We estimate at least seven or eight hours extra just to do a day job.

"We are going to say to members to step back from some of these things, that extra, and a good part of that is exam work. Teachers spend more time than is allocated to do preparation for exams. These are legitimate targets in industrial action. "Teachers are very worried about the children, and what the concern is is that COSLA are unprepared to actually find a resolution to this.

"The running of the exams on the day is a formality because most schools get invigilators to come in but it is the marking and preparation for exams and submitting course work to the SQA that they rely on as part of the process.

"At the moment the message isn't coming home to the employers and government.

"The SQA relies on a great deal of teacher work to get the system to work and we can disrupt that quite easily by saying we won't do those things. We don't want to get in that situation. "We think this is ridiculous, but we feel they have the money and choose not to spend it.

"We could be looking at work to rule or not doing extra work for SQA and we could ask members not to take part in marking exam papers in the future as well. That is already talked about. Teachers who would normally volunteer to mark exam papers, would step away from that and papers may not be marked."

There is concern over a failure to reach a settlement, five months after £200m was found to fund pay rises for local authority workers, including school staff, which allowed the lowest paid staff to get a pay increase of around 10 to 11% following the intervention of the First Minister.

Union leaders had previously warned Scots council leaders that frontline service cuts "won't be tolerated" after accepting the pay deal which end the dispute at the 11th hour that threatened to shut schools and waste disposal services.

Within days of the extra money being found, the Scottish Government said savings of £500m would have to be made.

Mr Swinney said the new pay agreements had led to a bill of £700m, which meant “taking money from elsewhere”.

The dispute saw piles of rubbish build up in city centres as waste workers went on strike, but a settlement was reached a matter of days before schools across Scotland were expected to close as the industrial dispute deepened.

Mr Searson said there did not seem to be any such intervention from Nicola Sturgeon and said he was shocked that the strikes that have taken place so far have been allowed to happen.

"Whatever the arguments, why do we still have children out of school.

My argument is COSLA are irresponsible in what they are doing. They allowed this to develop because of their own political arguments with the government and this needs to be resolved quickly. "The consequence is teachers think why do I continue teaching, I will go and do something else. Teachers are starting to think that they are not valued properly and they are quite content to have strike action and make not attempt to resolve it.

"It seems that they are for digging in and just saying you strike as much as you like, and cause as much disruption as you like, we are not giving in. And I don't know why that should be the case.

Scotland's largest teachers' union, the EIS said on Monday that they will target the constituencies of the first minister and her deputy in an escalation of strike action between February 22 and 24.

It could lead to six further days of strike action in the Glasgow Southside constituency of Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney's Perthshire North patch.

The EIS will also target the Dunfermline constituency of Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville.

The Herald: Shirley-Anne Somerville

Ms Somerville has said teachers should suspend their strike action while pay talks continue, and called for more "compromise" as the exam season looms.

On top of the two national strikes, there are plans for 20 days of rolling strikes across all local authority areas from March 13 until April 21.

A further three days of action from March 7 will target the four MSPs' constituencies and the ward of Dumfries and Galloway councillor Katie Hagmann.

She is resources spokesperson for council umbrella body Cosla but as councillor her ward is Mid Galloway and Wigtown West.

EIS members have already taken part in three days of national strike action and 16 days of rolling action across the country.

The SSTA took strike action on December 7 and 8 as well as January 11.

Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said: "We are committed to resolving this dispute but union demands for a 10% increase for all teachers are not affordable within the Scottish Government’s fixed budget.

“We remain in talks with unions and hope that these will continue to progress towards a compromise to ensure a sustainable deal for all involved. I continue to urge the unions to call off industrial action while talks continue.

“We are working with partners to put contingencies in place, but I hope that everyone involved, including the unions, would agree that learners, parents and carers should not have this worry hanging over them.”

Councillor Katie Hagmann, COSLA resources spokesman said: "We remain in discussions with our trade union and Scottish Government partners as we endeavour to find a resolution to the situation.

“Strikes in education are in nobody’s interest and all parties are eager to seek a resolution that not only protects the teaching and wider local government workforce, but also our children and young people’s educational experience, and their wider health and wellbeing.

“COSLA Leaders are clear that given the financial pressures being faced, it remains the case that the 10% ask of the teaching trade unions is unaffordable and therefore we still remain a distance apart in terms of a settlement. And given the Local Government settlement for 23/24, what teachers are asking for, over and above the current offer, is simply not sustainable on a recurring basis. Already, councils are considering a range of options to balance the books next year and options will inevitably include a reduction in jobs across all service areas, including schools.”