TEACHERS have voiced concerns about a potential threat to the standardised pay conditions for teachers.
Members of the NASUWT union heard fears that Scotland's education system will be undermined by moves to vary the provisions agreed as part of national negotiations on terms and conditions for staff.
Pay is currently determined by a negotiating committee made up of representatives of the Scottish Government, teaching unions and local authority umbrella body Cosla.
But the NASUWT said the lack of statutory pay rules, the increasing number of councils opting to vary the current relaxed provisions, and moves by some councils to withdraw from Cosla poses the risk of the a "breakdown" of the present negotiating machinery.
Speaking in front of the NASUWT annual conference in Cardiff this weekend, union's general secretary Chris Keates said: "Teachers' pay and conditions of service are inextricably linked to the provision of high-quality education.
"The national negotiating machinery is completely undermined if schools and employers at local level can vary the provisions agreed and, whilst in the past most adhered to the national position, more and more are seeking to vary them."
"The Scottish Government needs to act to stop the rot and make terms and conditions nationally binding at local level through statutory provisions and guidance.
"We have seen only too graphically in England the damage that is done to the profession and the education service when a free-for-all on pay and conditions of service takes hold."
Jane Peckham, NASUWT national official for Scotland, said teachers deserved the security of nationally determined pay and conditions of service.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Teachers' pay and conditions in Scotland are already determined at a national level, not by local employers, through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers.
"The SNCT includes representatives from COSLA, the Scottish Government and the teaching unions - including NASUWT - and reaches agreement through consensus with all three parties, with negotiations for the next deal currently under way."
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