Teachers could see 'ringfenced' wages cut by up to £13,000

• Activists fighting education cuts lobby the Scottish Parliament last year Picture: Neil Hanna

Local authority leaders want to force through pay cuts of up to 13,000 a year on some staff, to save 5.3 million from education budgets nationally.

Pay and conditions for teachers are currently being renegotiated as part of the recent budget deal between the Scottish Government and councils. It allowed them to reopen talks on teachers' pay in return for agreeing to freeze council tax and work towards Scottish Government targets such as smaller class sizes.

More than 2,500 people are currently on "conserved salaries", which local authority chiefs want to axe. Conserved salaries occur where teachers who were promoted to management keep their higher salary despite being forced to return to lower-paid roles due to staff reorganisation.

Teaching unions said it would be like "falling off a cliff edge" for those affected, and that it could see thousands out of pocket.

However, many in the profession are likely to welcome the move, with some classroom teachers now being paid 10,000 more for doing the same job as a colleague.

Ann Ballinger, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association, said there were more than 2,500 teachers on conserved salaries.

Most of those fall into three categories: those who were principal teachers (PTs) of a department at a school which moved to a faculty system; those who held an acting post, and those at a school that was merged with another.

The faculty system replaces separate PTs for biology, physics and chemistry with one faculty head for science. The heads of the other subjects, who did not get the PT science job, would go back to being classroom teachers, but would get to keep their PT salary - which can be up to 13,000 more.

An acting depute head, in the post for two years, is entitled to keep their higher salary under the conservation agreement.

And in a situation where two assistant heads at schools due to merge vie for the same job at the merged institution, the unsuccessful one would retain their higher salary while returning to the classroom.

Mrs Ballinger said: "There are huge savings to be made on this because it is not just their salaries but their pensions could be affected too."

Negotiations are under way at the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, the tripartite group set up to negotiate teachers' pay and conditions. Scottish Government, teaching unions and council representatives all sit on the group.

The move to end conserved salaries is being proposed by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), which estimated the move could save local authorities 5.3m.

Drew Morrice, assistant secretary of Scotland's biggest teaching union, the EIS, said: "If lifetime conservation is removed, it would disadvantage people in two crucial regards: it would impact on their pensions and, at a stroke, they would be earning less money."

As many as one in 20 teachers in Scotland could be affected by the move.

Mr Morrice said teachers having their salaries cut by thousands "virtually overnight" was "unacceptable".

He went on: "The current rules were a fundamental part of the 2001 agreement and you cannot just simply take that out of the agreement without compromising it. The deal between teaching unions, Cosla and the Scottish Government was based on compromise and the effect of removing one element brings into question the integrity of the whole agreement."

A senior education source said: "It is a very clever move by Cosla. They have picked on a small group of people who are going to be affected, but it is a group that other teachers are not going to want to go on strike to support them.

"If you are getting paid 34,000 and the person in the next classroom is getting 44,000 for doing the same job, you are not going to protect her.You are going to be annoyed that she's getting more than you."

Edinburgh city council estimates it has 345 teachers on conserved salaries at a total cost of about 400,000 a year. Glasgow had 600 teachers on conserved salaries in 2009-10 and has tried to reduce the number through early retirement.

Case studies: now pay attention at the back

TEACHER A was principal teacher (PT) of a physics department until the council decided to switch to a faculty system. That meant individual head-of-department posts – physics, chemistry and biology – were scrapped. Instead, they were replaced by a faculty head.

As a department head at a large inner-city school, Teacher A was paid 45,006. She applied for the new post of science faculty PT but was unsuccessful. However, she was able to keep that salary after being demoted to a classroom teacher. Under the proposed changes, she could see her salary drop almost instantly to the top of the classroom teachers' pay scale, 34,200, meaning a pay drop of 10,806.

TEACHER B was a senior classroom teacher at a small rural primary until his headteacher took sickness leave for stress. He then became acting head of the school. After two years, the headteacher returned from absence, fully recovered, to take up running the school and teacher B had to go back to the classroom. However, as he has held the higher-salaried post of acting head for more than 23 months, he was entitled to keep that wage under the conserved salary agreement. His salary could now fall from the 42,288 earned as a small primary head to the maximum for a class teacher, 34,200, a drop of 8,088.

TEACHER C was a principal teacher of languages at a large inner-city secondary, earning at the top end of the pay scale for his position – 48,120.

He discovered his school was to merge with a nearby secondary and hoped to maintain his position at the new institution. He was competing against his opposite number at the other school, and lost out to his rival.

He went back to being a classroom teacher and, under the McCrone deal, kept the higher salary. However, he now faces a drop to the maximum for a classroom teacher of 34,200, a reduction of 13,920.

Peace in our time - the 2001 deal

BEFORE the 2001 pay and conditions deal for teachers, there was a decade of unrest and industrial action by a profession that felt overworked and unvalued.

A review by Professor Gavin McCrone, pictured, resulted in the 2001 Teachers' Agreement, informally dubbed the McCrone deal. It aimed to ensure teachers did not work more than a 35-hour week and guaranteed preparation time.

The deal ensured teachers can spend 12 hours of their week marking and preparing lessons rather than teaching. It also led to a 23 per cent pay rise for teachers,

However, much of what was included in the deal has already fallen by the wayside.

A survey by the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association last year found staff work, on average, ten hours above the 35-hour limit. And a scheme to encourage good staff to stay in the classroom on a higher salary, rather than seek management jobs, is being scrapped.

The agreement also brought in the controversial "job sizing toolkit" which calculates senior salaries based on a number of factors, including the level of deprivation in the school's locality and number of pupils.

The EIS continues to be committed to the McCrone deal.