EIS manifesto urges major investment in 'quality education'

The manifesto document, entitled ‘Stand Up with Us For Quality Education’, argues that although Scotland has a good education system led by dedicated professionals, fundamental changes are required to secure ‘quality education’ into the future.

The union’s demands have been accompanied by independent analysis and costings from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPRR). The total cost of implementing the proposed package is put at around £860million per year – around 1.3 percent of the total Scottish Government budget in 2026/27.

In producing the manifesto, teachers have identified the three biggest ‘stressors’ in schools at present: pupil behaviour, ASN provision, and overall workload.

They say that the government should “facilitate and put additional funding into schools so that they have the time and resources to address distressed, violent and aggressive pupil behaviour”, noting that teachers and pupils have the right to work and learn “in an environment which is safe and free from violence and aggression.”

As things stand, they add, schools and councils “simply do not have sufficient staff, resources, policy frameworks or professional support to log and follow up on all incidents of violence and aggression or, ultimately, to enable appropriate and peaceful learning conditions for all pupils.”

With regards to ASN provision, which in Scotland is founded on the principle of presumed mainstream inclusion, the manifesto describes the gap between policy and practice as “intolerable”, blaming “insufficient levels of funding to sustain the resources, decreasing numbers of specialist ASN teachers, insufficient associated professional staff (especially Educational Psychologists) and insufficient time required to effectively deliver additional support for learning to the 43% of pupils who require it.”

The EIS says that it is simply impossible for teachers to meet pupils’ needs in the current environment, and that the consequences of this have negative effects on all pupils and staff.

Teacher workload is described as being at “unsustainable levels”, with problems exacerbated by budget cuts, a loss of principal teachers and headteachers from schools, the uncertainty created by “education reform churn”, and the insistence that staff spend time “collating swathes of data for the purposes of ‘quality assurance’.”

Teachers unions have been warning that staff are increasingly burnt out. (Image: PA)

In response to these concerns, the EIS has laid out five key policies as part of a “long-term vision for schools”.

The union is calling for a nationwide reduction in class sizes to a maximum of twenty pupils, a restriction that currently only applies to a limited number of ‘practical’ secondary school subjects, and points out that current class sizes are higher than OECD averages. In Scotland, pupils in P4-7 can be taught in classes with as many as thirty three pupils, which is also the limit during the first three years of secondary school.

The EIS argues that the benefits of reduced class sizes could include higher earnings for pupils over their lifetimes, a claim supported by IPRR analysis citing the effects of a similar policy in Sweden.

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Class contact time is another key area highlighted in the manifesto. The Scottish Government is already under significant pressure on this topic, having failed to deliver on a clear 2021 commitment to cut teachers’ contact time by 90 minutes per week. However, even this reduction would still leave Scotland with notable higher levels of class contact time than OECD averages and high-performing countries.

As a result, the EIS now argues that teachers should spend twenty hours a week teaching classes, with a further ten hours allocated for planning, marking and development work. This, they point out, would take Scotland to around the OECD average for primary school, while still leaving contact time above the international average for secondary teachers.

The third policy demand concerns the provision of registered teachers in nurseries, the total number of which has plummeted since the SNP came to power – there were 1,689 teachers working in the early learning sector in 2007, but that figure now stands at just 696. The EIS wants to see the number of early years teachers restored to 2007 levels, which it argues would better support children and improve the early identification of additional support needs, all of which can help to “mitigate socio-economic disadvantage.”

Scotland’s political parties are also being urged to commit to universal free school meals for all pupils. The current government had pledged to introduce a universal model for primary pupils before reneging on the promise, but the EIS believes that all children in schools should receive free meals. This, they argue, would cut costs for families while tackling hunger and wider food insecurity, all of which “undermine a young person’s ability to learn and to socialise, and therefore to benefit fully from their school education.”

Finally, the EIS is demanding that additional resources and ring-fenced funding are introduced in order to address the significant and increasing challenges of ASN provision in schools. The number of pupils with some form of recognised additional need now stands at 37 percent in primary schools and 49 percent in secondaries, and the union believes that additional funding for specialist staff is one of a number of necessary changes.

Analysis by the IPRR has put the cost of the union’s key policy demands at around £860m per year, although this number can be reduced if elements are phased in as pupil numbers fall. Some costs would also fall over time, for example after new classroom spaces are built. The EIS argues that this would be a worthwhile investment in Scotland’s young people and their future.

Although it recognises that the cost could be reduced by implementing the changes over a longer period, it argues that teachers and pupils “cannot afford to wait longer than the next Parliamentary term for full implementation”, adding that it would be “wrong to sacrifice the interests of the current cohort of pupils, and to risk perpetuation of the issues that are negatively impacting teacher recruitment and retention.”

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The manifesto also highlights three additional ‘key challenges’ to be addressed in schools.

The first of these is the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and other forms of education technology, which the union says are potentially useful, but must not be used either to replace teachers or to make decisions in their place. They also point out the potential risks relating to “reliability, cognitive growth, inbuilt bias, equality and data protection”, and say that further developments must be carefully planned and agreed with the teaching profession.

The EIS also accuses the SNP of failing to deliver on promises around instrumental music tuition in schools. It says that the party promised to abolish fees for instrumental tuition, to ensure that music and instrumental tuition are regarded as core in the curriculum, and to create professionally-recognised instrumental teachers by enabling them to register with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS). The EIS manifesto says that although “most fees have been removed”, some areas are reintroducing them for activity such as ensemble performance, and that differing council approaches have “led to a postcode lottery.” Education secretary Jenny Gilruth was challenged on the matter of GTCS registration for instrumental teachers during the 2025 EIS conference, and promised that the pledge would be delivered, but the union says that little if any progress has in fact been made.

Concerns about the state of the school estate – which have been explored in depth by The Herald – are also raised, with the EIS arguing that many school buildings “are not well designed for the needs of the school community and are packed beyond capacity.” The manifesto calls for “more capital investment in school buildings, accelerated timeframes for new-builds, and school expansion, and greater teacher involvement at the planning and design stages to ensure that buildings are fully fit for educational purpose and meet the highest health and safety standards.”

Speaking exclusively to The Herald prior to the manifesto launch, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said:

“What we're trying to do is to argue the case for proper and increased investment in our education service so that things can be better for children and young people in the here and now.

“But we're also arguing that by doing so, by making that investment now, we are going to save ourselves an absolute fortune down the line because we don't have the health inequalities that comes from a poorer experience of education, young people will have less interaction with the criminal justice system because they are better educated, we will have stronger employability for all of our young people.

“We can afford it. It's about whether we have the political will to make it happen.”