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Threat of teachers’ strike ballot eases                     4/3/13

A threat of a potential teachers’ strike against the council’s education cuts is on the wane  

The Western Isles branch of the teachers’ union EIS had warned it was considering taking steps for industrial action after fears the Comhairle was sacrificing quality of education in its drive to save money.

The union expressed “grave concerns”over “drastic cuts” through introducing e-learning, a move towards an asymmetric - or shorter - school week and halving the specialist art, music and PE teachers from the islands’ primary schools.

However, following a meeting with education chiefs, the union now proposes to put a planned move towards strike action on ice.

Local EIS secretary Richard Fraser said: “We will be recommending at our AGM that we hold off from an indicative ballot of our members at the present time and work with the Comhairle on protecting jobs and conditions of service.”

Mr Fraser said a “number of issues around the key areas of concern” have been “cleared up” after the meeting with the council.

He added: “The most positive aspect from our point of view is that the Comhairle is willing to work to avoid compulsory redundancy and this is very important at this difficult time.”

However, the council previously indicated it would be “very difficult” not to make teachers compulsory redundancy under cost cutting educational changes.

The EIS said that  Bernard Chisholm, the Education Department’s head of children’s services, “was at pains to point out that he believed there had been a misunderstanding of what e-learning would involve and recognised that from the beginning it should have been presented as curriculum redesign.”

At the last minute, the department reworded the e-learning title whilst, at a council meeting in February, accepting blame for the “misunderstanding” after all the public consultation meetings.

E-learning is not envisaged for S1 and S2 classes and is not appropriate for all subjects. The union says it was told its main focus is to bring pupils together for subjects where there is a low uptake to create viable sized classes and to make best use of teacher time and specialist knowledge.  

Kate MacDonald, local EIS President, raised concerns about non-teaching staff supervising pupils being taught via computer and video links in the receiving schools. The Comhairle and EIS agreed to seek guidance on this from the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS).

The union’s biggest issue with the asymmetric week is making head teachers responsible for pupils in the school when they are being tutored by volunteers.  The EIS believe this is fundamental change to their conditions of service.

The union said they were told the asymmetric week will be piloted after the summer.

The local EIS is optimistic that compulsory redundancies can be avoided by inviting teachers to take up voluntary early retirement, keeping recruitment internal, using fixed term contracts for additional posts and the option of re-training.  

The union says it was assured any surplus posts after restructuring would explore the option of teachers being re-trained or given another job in the council.