The Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association is set to run a formal postal ballot for industrial action on reducing workload from 14-30 September. General secretary Seamus Searson said the union’s national executive was “very much aware of the efforts of the deputy first minister [John Swinney] to address teacher workload [but it] needs to be reduced in the current session”. President Euan Duncan said that much of a teacher’s time was “now taken up with assessments and verification of assessments”.
Former education secretary Michael Russell has been assigned the task of examining the impact of Brexit on all aspects of Scottish life. In the new role of minister for UK negotiations on Scotland’s place in Europe, Mr Russell will explore the implications for key sectors such as education. A TESS survey shortly before the 23 June referendum found that more than half of teachers and other education professionals believed that Brexit would harm Scottish education.
Children’s author Theresa Breslin has written to every councillor in Argyll and Bute asking them to revisit the decision to scrap secondary school librarians. Ms Breslin also the president of CILIPS, the professional body for librarians, argued that the decision was at odds with recent government initiatives to get children reading. Argyll and Bute scrapped the posts this year to save £319,000 a year.
The 10 world-leading experts selected to “challenge and scrutinise” the Scottish government’s plans for education met for the first time this week. The panel members joined the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and deputy first minister, John Swinney, for two days of meetings and school and college visits in East Lothian and Edinburgh. The group’s wil give advice on the Scottish government’s priorities for education..
