Cuts damage class discipline say teachers Morale is suffering, finds EIS survey

The survey also found that 80per cent of teachers thought morale had declined since the changes, 54per cent thought schools were not run as well as before and 49per cent said there had been a negative impact on what schools were delivering.

The survey, carried out by TNS System 3, was commissioned by the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) over concerns that new management structures were not working.

In the wake of the McCrone agreement on teachers' pay and conditions it was recognised that having a head of department for every subject was not always cost-effective or necessary.

As a result, some local authorities have merged subject areas such as history, geography and English into joint faculties under one senior teacher.

While the EIS recognises this can be advantageous in some circumstances, such as smaller rural secondaries, officials believe the policy has been pursued too vigorously by some local authorities.

Those singled out in the survey were Angus, Dumfries and Galloway, Stirling and Renfrewshire.

There is also a concern that the faculties sometimes merge subjects that bear no relationship to each other, leading to departments with faculty heads who have no understanding of the subjects they are in charge of.

The EIS said the changes impacted on indiscipline because the former principal teachers were always the first port of call for a teacher with a problem pupil.

After the survey, the EIS called on the Scottish Executive to intervene to prevent the new promoted structures in secondary schools impacting on education.

Ronnie Smith, general secretary of the EIS, said: "The survey indicates very serious dissatisfaction among secondary teachers regarding the effect of changes in promoted post structures in secondary schools.

"There is no consistency either across council areas or, in many cases, even within council areas in the extent to which changes have been implemented. What has been lacking throughout has been an overview by the executive.

"Ministers cannot sit back any longer. They must intervene directly to ensure that the promoted post structure in secondary schools must lead to schools which are better rather than worse."

Mr Smith also called on local authorities to "ref lect" on the survey. "They have failed to convince staff the plans are workable, " he added.

However, last night Cosla, the umbrella organisation for local authorities, attacked the survey because only 38per cent of the 8000 teachers it was sent to responded.

The Rev Ewan Aitken, Cosla's education spokesman, also insisted that local differences were part of the local democracy.

"The representative nature of the sample is open to question and the survey deals exclusively with opinions and perceptions but no evidence, " he said.

"The reported lack of uniformity across local authorities on the introduction of new promoted posts does not ref lect a key feature which all parties have signed up to - that there should be local decision making within a national framework to ref lect local circumstances and address local priorities."

A spokeswoman for the executive said school management was a matter for local authorities and was not something that could be imposed at a national level.

She also said there were many examples where changes were working well, and claimed any problems would be picked up by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) .

"Although the changes are for councils to decide, we are in close touch with them and we are aware that there are many examples where it looks like restructuring is bringing about improvements, " she said.

"If something is going wrong it would be picked up by HMIE, and if that happens then local authorities would have to work with the inspectorate to rectify any concerns."