SCOTLAND'S largest teachers' union has dismissed the latest pay offer from the government and councils as only "tiny baby steps" in the right direction.

The EIS said they had been asking for a “significant improvement” on the 5 per cent initially offered to most teaching staff.

However, the latest deal would amount to a 6% pay boost backdated to April 2022 and a further 5.5% from the start of the 2023 financial year.

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General secretary of the EIS Andrea Bradley told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland on Wednesday: “I would say what’s been put through the media and subsequently put on the table for negotiation later this week amounts to a tiny baby step in the right direction rather than a significant improvement.”

She said the union’s salary negotiating committee will consider the figures on Wednesday morning with a decision on whether to push ahead with strikes planned for the end of the month, March and April. 

The union boss also criticised the Scottish Government for sharing details of the offer with the before formally presenting them to the Scottish Negotiation Committee for Teachers (SNCT).

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“Our members have not had a proper chance to look at this – I think the offer came in after 9pm last night when many of them would have been getting ready to go to their beds,” she said.

“Their first careful look at it will be probably as we’re speaking just now ahead of the meeting at 10am.

“I can absolutely assure you that our members will look very, very carefully and will take very, very seriously the terms of this offer and the way in which those terms have been shared with them.”

Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville insisted that the offer was “good and fair.”

She called for education unions to suspend ongoing strike action while the offer is considered.

“I think this is a fair deal,” she said.

“I appreciate it’s not the 10% that teaching unions wanted, but that is unaffordable, but I do think it’s a fair deal, and that’s why I’ve written to the trade unions asking them to put this new deal to the members.

“They asked for a new offer – the new offer is now on the table.”

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Ms Somerville was asked where the £156 million for the new offer has come from.

She said: “We’ve managed to find a sum that we can increase the offer for this year and we’ve also put money on the table to help for the next financial year.

“The challenge that we’ve set ourselves is how can we improve when we had an already allocated budget.

“We’ve taken very difficult decisions to ensure that we’ve been able to improve their offer respecting the unions already rejected that (previous offer).”