Teachers will strike during exams ‘if necessary’

As reported by the BBC, teachers will continue to strike during the exam season if the current dispute is not resolved, the EIS union has said

Three weeks of rolling action by the union across different council areas has reached its final day, with staff striking in Shetland and Inverclyde, but more national strikes are planned for the end of the month, followed by another programme of rolling action.

EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley said the mandate was in place until “more or less the middle of May”.

“If there wasn’t a resolution before then, we would intend to use the full extent of the mandate, so that would cover the exam time,” she told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme.

The EIS has already announced two further days of national strikes, on 28 February and 1 March, followed by a further 20 days of rolling strikes between 13 March and 21 April. Without a deal, strikes could continue into the exam period – potentially the third time in four years it faces disruption after the impact of Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021.

Education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said on Sunday that teachers should suspend their strike action while pay talks continue, to allow schools to stay open and she called for “more compromise” but Ms Bradley said all possible resolutions put forward by the union had been “dismissed, rejected or ignored” by the Scottish government and local government body Cosla.

The current five per cent offer includes rises of up to 6.85% for the lowest-paid staff The education secretary has previously said there will be no new pay offer and that the union’s requested 10% pay rise is unaffordable.