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Plenary, 30 Sep 1999

30 Sep 1999 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

Non-Executive Business: Education

Monteith, Mr Brian Con Mid Scotland and Fife Watch on SPTV

I am pleased to take part in today's debate, because it is important that someone tries to bring the two sides together. In these days of cosy consensus politics, that is what we are meant to be all about. It appears that entrenched positions have been taken on the millennium review and the associated pay dispute, which is reflected in the Scottish National party's motion and the minister's amendment.

It is important to encourage teachers and to build, not dash, their morale, while trying to modernise some of their working practices. There is a need for more extra-curricular input, but we must recognise the work that teachers already do in that field. Teachers taking pupils' work home, which they spend hours correcting, is extracurricular activity.

This Government's approach to the teachers' dispute is a model exercise in how not to run employee relations. Simply because COSLA is the employer, Sam Galbraith cannot behave like Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the dispute. The Government is a member of the SJNC and has a role to play. Sadly, Sam Galbraith has not been willing to play that role. It is not enough to say that an extra £8 million was provided to COSLA. Once it was clear, as it was to many of us, that negotiations were going to break down, he had a duty not just to the teachers and the employers but to the children of Scotland, to whom he often refers. The last thing that anyone wants is for the situation to erupt into an industrial dispute.

The Government's dealings with the teachers are already a plague on its cosy, consensual style. No sooner did Brian Wilson become an education minister than he suspended the introduction of higher still for a year. By the time that Mary-doll had taken over from Brian Wilson, higher still was so confused that strike action was averted only by phasing it in. What had Brian Wilson been doing for the year—sitting on his hands?

Now the third education minister in two years refuses to use his good offices to calm down the situation. Instead, he incites teachers, before their ballots, with talk of the suspension of the SJNC and the establishment of a committee of inquiry. As the Conservatives have pointed out, that seems to many people like a threat. I am not sure how many teachers believe that it is a threat, because, like many other people, we have been saying for a number of years that the SJNC is failing to deliver the pay and conditions that teachers should enjoy. There was evidence to show that teachers in Scotland were some 6 per cent behind their brothers and sisters in England. We proposed the abolition of the SJNC in 1997; at the time, the Labour party opposed that proposal, but it now sees it as necessary.

The Education (Scotland) Act 1980 makes it perfectly clear that arbitration can be part of the established statutory process. All that Sam has to do—and there is still time—is to pick up the phone and get the parties together. We suggest that, following initial discussion with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, the employers and the teachers unions should make fresh submissions and pendulum arbitration should be used to determine the best settlement.

For those members who do not follow football

transfer deals, I had better explain pendulum arbitration. The system helps to bring parties to the table in a way that makes them closer. ACAS would have to recommend to the First Minister the better of the two proposals, which would force the two parties to work to find a solution. That would ensure that even those who did not make the successful submission are closer to the submission that is finally adopted.

There is also the proposed committee of inquiry. When a problem is kicked into the long grass, I do not feel that it is important or necessary to worry about who will sit on a committee when the minister is choosing members—it is the minister's committee. My colleague asked last week what would happen if the committee of inquiry delivered a result that was either what the teachers wanted now or that was even more than that. Will Sam Galbraith meet the committee's recommendation? He could not give a guarantee last week and I suspect that cannot give us a guarantee this week.

Some aspects of the SNP motion might seem attractive. Certainly, more resources need to be made available, possibly in the form of an ex gratia payment to buy teachers out of their contracts. That method would not increase future salary costs, which is an important consideration. However, it is wrong to pretend that resources are fundamental to the process, because there is no doubt that many aspects of the process require structural change.

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Plenary, 30 Sep 1999

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