Why are Scotland's teachers to be balloted on strikes?

People often assume teacher strike action is going to be over pay, but that’s not the issue on this occasion. Instead, teachers are protesting about something called contact time, and the government’s failure to reduce it.

In its manifesto for the 2021 Holyrood elections, the SNP promised that it would reduce teachers’ contact time by 90 minutes per week. A separate but related pledge to increase teacher numbers by several thousand was also included.

However, with the next Scottish Parliament vote just a few months away, neither goal is on track to be achieved.

After settings a number of specific deadlines, teachers now appear to have lost patience. In a recent consultative ballot on the some issue, 92 percent of EIS members backed action short of a strike, and 83 percent said that they would be willing to take strike action in an attempt to force the government to deliver on the promise that was made.

What is contact time and why does it matter?

This refers to the amount of time in a teacher’s working week that is supposed to be spent in front of students – the time that professionals spend in ‘contact’ with their classes.

Clearly, ensuring that teachers can spend an appropriate amount of time actually teaching is a critical concern for any education system, but non-contact time is also vitally important, because this is when teachers do all of the other work that determines the effectiveness of the education that young people receive.

This includes reviewing the work of individual students, marking jotters, providing feedback, recording progress establishing targets, planning lessons, and preparing teaching materials. Non-contact time is also important for collaborating with colleagues on whole-school initiatives, as well as some of the professional developments that allows teachers to improve their own skills and performance.

Teachers also need non-contact time in order to carry out some of the less obvious and tangible activities that help to build relationships with their pupils.

Is contact time high in Scotland?

Very much so. Scotland’s teachers are contracted for a 35 hour working week, and 22.5 of those hours – just under two-thirds of the total) are allocated for class contact.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which produces the PISA international league tables, this figure is higher than almost any other comparable country.

At part of its ‘Education at a Glance’ research, the OECD compares the number of “net teaching hours” carried out by a teacher over the school year.

In Scotland, the figure is 855 hours and – unusually – is the same across early years, primary and secondary.

Countries including the Netherlands, New Zealand and Ireland have higher class contact levels for primary school teachers, although the figures for high performing nations such as Estonia, Finland and Korea are far lower.

At secondary school level, only the United States, Mexico and Costa Rice are recorded as having higher levels of class contact time than Scotland. The OECD average at this level is around 700 hours, while the EU average is even lower.

Why hasn’t the promise to cut contact time been kept?

There is, of course, no simple answer to this, but a number of different factors are certainly relevant.

Firstly, reducing contact time obviously requires more teachers working in schools. If all existing staff are going to be given more time away from their classes, then other staff will have to come in to fill those gaps.

However, the latest stats show that teacher numbers are actually lower than they were back in 2021. They are also lower than they were in 2007 when the SNP first took office.

It also seems clear that the implications of cutting contact time were not fully understood when the promise was made. At various stages, what little progress had been made suddenly stalled because more work was required to properly address the logistics of the issue.

In primary schools, cutting class contact time is a more straightforward proposition, because those working in that sector are able to teach all pupils across all stages. As a result, the challenge is largely limited to the need to put more teachers into schools, and then arrange staff timetables in a way that respects the reduction in contact time without disrupting pupils experiences.

But things are very different in secondary schools, where subject specialists are required: you can’t just use any teacher to cover the gaps created by the contact time cut.

That’s already much more complicated, but there’s more. In smaller schools, some departments may only have a single member of staff, so in order to reduce their teaching time the school will either have to bring in someone else for just a few hours a week – something that is likely to be all but impossible for many rural and island schools – or effectively overstaff the department by adding an additional member of staff.

The EIS says that unions have worked hard to find a way forward, offering a number of compromises and even suggesting changes to teacher contracts that could facilitate progress, but that the lack of action in response has left them with “no option but to escalate the workload dispute and move to a statutory ballot as a means of standing up for exhausted and strung-out teachers who continue to struggle with intolerable workload and a raft of other challenges in our schools besides.”

What do the government and councils have to say?

A Scottish Government spokesperson said that they are “committed to working with teaching unions and COSLA to agree our approach to delivering a reduction in class contact time at pace.”

They added:  “Ministers respect union members’ right to withdraw their labour, but are disappointed that the EIS has taken this action while these constructive discussions are ongoing.

 “The number of teachers in Scotland's classrooms has increased by more than 2,500 over the past decade, with Scotland having the highest level of spending per pupil in the UK, as a result of investment by this Government.”

The SNP made the promise to cut contact time, which means the Scottish Government must be held to account over it, but councils are also involved in this dispute. They are, after all, the organisations that actually run schools and are legally responsible for them.

According to teachers, a major bone of contention has been councils’ attempts to exert control over what staff will be able to do with the extra 90 minutes of non-contact time each week. Unions have been clear that this policy is about reducing teachers’ workload, not adding new tasks to their already bulging to-do lists, and want teachers to be trusted to use this additional time “to undertake the professional duties associated with learning, teaching and assessment.”

COSLA did not respond to a request for comment.

What happens next?

The EIS ballot is due to open on 12 November and will run until 14 January. If members back strike action, then officials will formulate plans that could include strike action that will almost certainly close schools across the country.

This disruption would be occurring as campaigning for the 2026 Holyrood election gets fully under way.

Teaching unions have shown in recent years that they are able to mobilise large number of members and supporters for public demonstrations, and would very likely do so again.