Handing responsibility for hiring teachers to schools would destabilise the education system and create high levels of uncertainty around key workforce issues, Scotland’s largest teaching union has warned.
Vitally, the move could jeopardise the ‘no compulsory redundancy agreements the unions have with councils, said Drew Morrice, the EIS assistant secretary who represents teachers on national pay and conditions negotiations.
Headteachers, meanwhile, say that they have no desire to become employers. That function was better carried out by specialist local authority staff, they said.
However, if the recently announced review of school governance (see box, below) failed to give schools the ability to hire and fire staff, it would result in headteachers having no more power than they have now, said education consultant David Cameron, who wrote a review of devolved school management for the Scottish government, published in 2011.
Stick to the status quo?
Teachers’ terms and conditions are negotiated nationally, and education secretary John Swinney has said it is his presumption that, following the school governance review, things will stay that way. However, the body responsible for employing teachers is up for debate, the government has confirmed.
If education is to improve, that’s a question of investment, rather than governance
This week, TESS learned that there were four options on the table: the status quo, with councils as the employers; schools taking responsibility for employing their own staff; new education regions assuming the role of employer; or national government.
Mr Swinney says that the aim of the review is that more decisions about education should be taken at school level.
‘Bread-and-butter issues’
But if the future of councils as the employers of teachers was in question, then so were local bargaining arrangements, said Mr Morrice.
He said: “The Scottish Negotiating Committee for teachers sets the core terms and conditions but a lot of issues are devolved and many matters have to be determined at a local level. Some bread-and-butter issues affecting teachers will be open to reinterpretation - discipline and grievance procedures, staff development, promoted post structures, specific job remits, appointment procedures.”
The government should be creating stability in the system, not uncertainty, he added.
“If education is to improve, that’s a question of investment, rather than governance.”
Jim Thewliss, general secretary of secondary heads’ union School Leaders Scotland, welcomed the governance review, saying that more funds going directly to schools would enable them to better tailor the offering to their communities.
But he drew a line at schools taking on the role of employers. He said: “We do not have any appetite for the removal of the layer of governance that sits between national governance and schools. We think that provides a useful and essential function. We are not looking for the power to hire and fire staff; specialists in local authorities do that.”
A Scottish government spokeswoman said that procedures on the recruitment of teachers currently varied across Scotland. Dismissals were underpinned by the General Teaching Council for Scotland code of practice, she added, which gave education directors the power to dismiss an employee.
