Scots teachers to vote on whether to boycott Curriculum for Excellence

Published on Friday 10 June 2011 13:05

TEACHERS have agreed to hold a ballot to boycott the development of the Scottish Government's Curriculum for Excellence.

Delegates at the Educational Institute for Scotland (EIS) conference also voted to delay any further proposed changes in schools.

At the meeting in Perth today, a motion was passed instructing EIS council to organise a ballot to boycott any further development work on the new curriculum.

This vote will be held by November.

The new system has been billed as the biggest shake-up of Scottish education for a generation. It is intended to broaden pupils' learning, give teachers more freedom and make lessons less prescriptive.

But teachers said today the changes were being brought in too quickly, increasing teachers' workloads and damaging pupils' learning.

Introducing the boycott motion to conference, Michael Dolan, from West Dunbartonshire, said changes to the curriculum, teaching methodologies, assessment methods and reporting on pupils' progress to parents were "all too much".

Teachers are being "asked to plan for changes before anyone can tell us where we are going".

He said: "It's all too much and there's not enough support and time to evaluate the effects and implications of the changes. We do need to be given proper time and resources to implement changes.

"In education, we can't afford to get it wrong. We can't experiment with the education of a generation of young people."

A separate motion to suspend the Curriculum for Excellence because of massive cuts to education was also carried by union members. A similar motion was passed by conference last year.

Proposer Ken Brown, from East Dunbartonshire, said: "We should be talking about the availability of resources for a modern, 21st-century teaching profession. We should be taking about extra resources and time to get together and discuss them.

"Instead we've got budget cuts, not extra resources, and larger class sizes. This is an education model that was invented in a time of plenty but is now being developed in a time of austerity. We're going from one unsuccessful plan written on the back of a fag packet to another.

"We need to send a strong message to Cosla (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities). We need a moratorium on new developments and the dizzying increase of change."

Seconding the motion, Alison Murphy said the delay was needed to "pause and think and reflect" on the proposals.

She said: "This is not the time to be rushing into new developments. If we keep doing more and more with less and less we will end up doing it all badly."

EIS members also approved a motion to demand that the Scottish Government increases the amount of money it is spending on its Curriculum for Excellence. The motion said the Government should set aside "adequate resources" needed to implement the changes.

• Read more on this story in The Scotsman tomorrow