scotletters@tesglobal.com

Tacking bureaucracy in schools - a different view

The EIS teaching union has a number of reservations regarding the article “Teachers still can’t see the work for the trees” (26 September).

This article was based on a joint EIS-Education Scotland CPD event with no accredited media in attendance. This meeting, held on a Saturday morning in Edinburgh (not Glasgow, as erroneously reported in the article), was very well attended and offered teachers the opportunity to consider how the recommendations of the Tackling Bureaucracy in Schools report might be applied at school level to help to reduce unnecessary paperwork.

However, the EIS has concerns regarding the way in which TESS reported the event. The 54 per cent figure highlighted in your accompanying graphic was used out of context and creates a misleading impression of what was said at the meeting. The graphic states: “Limited impact: 54 per cent - proportion of schools that said a government report into cutting red tape was not being implemented”. This is not a claim that was actually made at the meeting.

What was reported at the meeting, and more accurately reflected in main text of your article, is that 54 per cent of teachers feel that the report has not been applied specifically to the process of negotiating working time agreements in schools. However, it is not a measure of the number of teachers who have engaged with the broader tackling-bureaucracy agenda, nor is it an indicator of the number of schools which have made use of the report to address other workload issues.

Clearly much work is still to be done to deliver the recommendations of the report and to tackle excessive teacher workload in schools. The EIS remains committed to working constructively with the Scottish government, local authorities and national education agencies to cut bureaucracy and lighten teacher workload.

Brian Cooper

Head of communications, the Educational Institute of Scotland

Short and tweet

We do well, not because we’re more clever but because we try harder, longer and better.

@CraigmountHS

As well as having third years in Malawi and Sweden, we’ve now got a group of third-year #StrathBEd students teaching in Versailles. #bonnechance

@ajcorrigan

So happy to see a CPD event for promoting positive body image. This is something I am passionate about implementing in schools #StrathBEd

@stephcoopermck

I survived my first day at uni and I didn’t get lost, which is a bonus :-) Looking forward to my first education lecture tomorrow #StrathBA

@Clairej512

100 years of the Sunday Post and Oor Wullie is to promote Scots language, according to the paper. Good for Wullie. We need to protect language.

@Aileymill

Another event with QIOs [quality improvement officers] today - a key group for providing feedback on how Insight [benchmarking tool] has been received by secondary schools and local authorities.

@Insightupdates

A successful physical education experience reverberates through.other classes, and contributes to a healthy school environment.

@physedsource

“One can’t be angry when one looks at a penguin.” John Ruskin

@dailyzen

Letters for publication in TESS should arrive by 10am Monday. Send your letters, ideally of no more than 250 words in length, including contact address and phone number, by email to scotletters@tesglobal.com or by post to TES Scotland, Thistle House, 21-23 Thistle Street, Edinburgh EH2 1DF. Letters may be edited