Building the 20:20 Vision

Acting on views expressed by members that workload was the single greatest source of increasing stress levels, 2019 AGM instructed that a comprehensive campaign be implemented to deliver meaningful and significant reductions in the workload of all teachers.

To date, our ‘Time to Tackle Workload’ campaign has concentrated on seeking increased teacher control of workload in schools by implementing the Empowered School agenda of collegiate working and increased professional trust. Many schools, using the additional service days, have successfully audited activities in schools so that they may be streamlined. As empowerment of teachers grows, further progress is being targeted at school level. a reduction of maximum class contact time to 20 hours per week.

The 20:20 campaign may seem ambitious, but so did a 10% pay claim! The reality is that the 20:20 reductions in class size and class contact would deliver changes that would bring Scotland’s teachers to around the international norm in these areas. The 20:20 demands would bring tangible benefits for teachers, and also to pupils, especially when allied with other workload improvements such as collegiate working and distributive decision making.

Without such concrete changes, teacher stress and potential burn out will only increase.

Another key element of the workload campaign is the ‘20:20’ demand, seeking to reduce teacher workload by obtaining an SNCT agreement for a reduction in class size maxima to 20 and

The EIS is currently putting together the narrative underpinning the 20:20 aims. For example, the recently published OECD Education at a Glance (2019) report has shown that Scottish secondary teachers have the highest percentage of their working time spent on teaching on average across the whole of the OECD – 63% compared to the average of 43%.

Time to Tackle Workload is an ambitious and vital campaign to ensure teacher health and wellbeing and to deliver the best possible educational outcomes.

To succeed we will need, as a profession and a union, to actively campaign and fight for our objectives. Our strong pay campaign delivered a landmark settlement; we need another strong and collective campaign to deliver a landmark agreement on workload