| Concerns have been raised elsewhere that a key agreement on pay and conditions struck in August — reducing primary teachers’ contact time with pupils to 23.5 hours — might be difficult to implement, particularly when illness and absence occur in the winter months.
In Glasgow, the Educational Institute of Scotland has instructed its members to refuse to take classes on Friday afternoons if they are not given time set aside for marking and preparation.
The union said primary teachers should not be expected to have less of an entitlement to their contractual rights than secondary teachers, who also have a contact time agreement, but the education authority said sending children home early would have health and safety implications.
That situation looks likely to be avoided in Dundee, however, thanks to a prudent recruitment policy by the local education department.
Danny McDonald, president of the EIS in Dundee, today said, “We are not in the same dire circumstances as Glasgow, because we do not have a staffing shortage.”
He said Glasgow’s shortages have arisen because they gave early retirement to a number of teachers last session and were now being forced to ask some retired staff to return.
Meanwhile, in Dundee, the authority had been able to recruit sufficient students from college. He said although there were some concerns over winter illnesses, the authority had put in additional teaching staff to honour the pay and conditions agreement over contact time.
A spokesman for the council said a solution had earlier been agreed by the negotiating committee, whereby a teacher absent while undergoing marking and preparation was covered by another teacher, time-tabled specifically to do the work. |
