Education is not a business: teachers hit out at plans for 'trust' schools

Members of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association (SSTA) yesterday voted by an overwhelming majority to oppose introduction of the new system at its annual conference in Peebles.

East Lothian Council has proposed to create clusters of "trust" schools which would be run by community boards at arms length from council control. Budgets would be gradually devolved to the boards and eventually the clusters could adopt charitable status which would save the authority thousands of pounds in rates.

Kay Macaskill, of the union's Lothians branch, said: "Would we allow patients to run the doctor's surgery or the clients to run the lawyer's practice?

"Wouldn't this just create another layer of bureaucracy? Schools cannot and should not be run as businesses."

Labour leader Iain Gray has dismissed the plan as an attempt to cut costs rather than improve education. But education secretary Michael Russell has welcomed the idea as innovative and called on other councils to come up with their own ideas for running schools.

Trust schools have already proved controversial in England, where private firms get input on what is taught in return for investing in new buildings.

Also at the conference, a survey of teachers' workload revealed thousands of teachers could be working more than 55 hours a week.

Anything over 35 hours a week would be a breach of teacher contracts under the McCrone Teachers' Agreement which set the limit in 2001.

The survey was carried out by the SSTA.

It found 78.22 per cent of Scottish teachers worked at least 40 hours in a quiet week.

More than 28 per cent worked between 45 and 50 hours while more than 24 per cent worked between 40 and 50 hours. Another 15.9 per cent worked up to 55 hours a week.

Ann Ballinger, general secretary of the SSTA, described the findings as "extremely worrying".

She said: "The reasons for the extra hours are all too predictable. Administration, pupils indiscipline, covering for absent colleagues, HMIe (school inspectors] visits, and marking being the most commonly reported."