Hansard

I would like to set out for Parliament the decision that I have taken relating to future professional conditions of teachers and give further details of the independent inquiry that I am establishing.

My first priority is the quality of education received by our children. I recognise that that priority is shared by teachers. I have paid tribute to the outstanding quality and commitment of teachers and I do so again.

It is one of my objectives to raise the professional status of teachers. There is a need for a fresh look at conditions of employment as part of a broader approach to restore teachers to their proper place in society. In order to achieve that, teachers must be willing to accept a degree of change. It is reasonable to expect similar flexibility and openness to change to that which has been shown by other professions and other local authority groups.

Local authority employers have recognised for some time the need for change in teachers' conditions. Many in the teaching profession have acknowledged that the present approach to hours of work and duties is a barrier to change and improvement. Despite this, the arrangements for discussing these issues have produced stagnation rather than progress.

Negotiations designed to lead to change failed in the early 1990s. Discussions on possible changes began again with the millennium review set up under the Scottish Joint Negotiating Committee for Teaching Staff in School Education in May 1997. The present negotiations started after the millennium review reported in September 1998. With the Educational Institute of Scotland ballot result announced last Friday the negotiations have reached an impasse.

I must emphasise that this offer did not come from the Executive. We did not formulate the offer; we did not put it on the table. It was the product of discussions between the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the teaching unions. I am here neither to support it nor to reject it.

It has been suggested that more money would automatically lead to a solution. I do not believe that money is the real issue. The local authority offer would have given the 18,000 teachers at the top of the unpromoted scale an increase of 17.3 per cent by 1 April 2001. The average increase across all grades would have been 14 per cent; no teacher would have got less than 11 per cent. The biggest increases would have come next year, not in 2001. All this is against the background of low inflation; inflation fell to 1.1 per cent in August.

Let me emphasise that the Executive was prepared to play its part in helping authorities to fund the settlement. The total cost of the deal would have increased the pay bill by £180 million by 2001-02. Given the level of inflation, there was generous provision for teachers' pay in the financial settlement for local government. However, we had told COSLA that we were prepared to be flexible beyond that to help the authorities. We had guaranteed an additional £8 million to COSLA prior to the last stages of their negotiations to help achieve a settlement. Money was available for the genuine modernisation of teachers' pay and conditions, on top of the additional resources that are already going into our schools.

Teachers have voted comprehensively against those proposals. They have every right to do that. My responsibility now is to find another way forward in order to deliver greater professionalism and flexibility, higher standards and better education for our children. Despite two years of discussion, for the second time this decade the current mechanism has failed to deliver a suitable package that is acceptable to teachers and that recognises their professional status and commitment. Clearly, the current arrangements do not work.

That is why I have decided that—to break the logjam—I will do two things. The first is to bring forward proposals to remove the statutory basis of the SJNC. That should come as no surprise. I made it clear to both sides at the outset that, should the discussions fail, the SJNC could not continue. It is an archaic piece of bargaining machinery that has demonstrably failed to address the need for change. It is inflexible because its agreements have the force of law and cannot be changed without further agreement. It has also established a wide-ranging remit over matters

which properly belong either to local management or, as in the case of class sizes, to this Parliament. I take the view that the laws of the land should be made here in Parliament, not in a negotiating committee. I believe that it is necessary to make this change to allow the proper consideration of terms of employment for the teaching profession.

At the same time, I am establishing an independent committee of inquiry. It will be asked to advise on what changes to the structure of teachers' conditions of employment, including pay, are required to meet the needs of the new millennium, and also to recommend a future approach to determining further changes to those conditions of employment. Its remit—a copy of which I have placed in the Scottish Parliament information centre—is wide and will allow all the issues that have arisen in the recent negotiations to be considered objectively on the basis of evidence.

I emphasise that I have no preconceived view of what the inquiry should recommend. I expect it to be fair, balanced and impartial. I believe that this is the way to address the very difficult issues that have arisen. I have asked the inquiry to report by May next year so that its conclusions can influence next year's negotiations. However, I consider that it is right that the SJNC is left with the final task of resolving the question of any pay agreement for 1999. That is its responsibility and I call on both sides to work out a realistic approach that will avoid any disruption in the classroom.

Finally, I turn to the chairmanship and membership of the inquiry. Today I will place in the information centre details of those who have agreed to serve.

The chairman will be Professor Gavin McCrone. He will bring to this inquiry long experience of economics, management and public administration. Although he has considerable university teaching experience, I have deliberately chosen someone who has no involvement in the school system in order to underline the objectivity with which this task should be approached.

Members will include a secondary and a primary head teacher, a local authority chief executive, a personnel director from a major business based in Scotland, the chairman of the Scottish School Boards Association and an academic with wide experience of pay and employment issues. One further member with a private sector or professional background will be appointed after discussions with the chairman. The inquiry has access to advice from a director of education and from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools and it will be supported by a well-resourced secretariat.

I am confident that with this mix of skills and experience the inquiry will be able to bring fresh thinking to these problems and to recommend solutions that will command general support. It is in everyone's interest to see the inquiry succeed, and I invite this Parliament to wish it well. I commend it to this Parliament.