Teaching unions seek rewards for failure

IT was in the early days of devolution that former First Minister Jack McConnell brokered the McCrone deal on teachers’ pay. A salary increase of nearly a quarter and a 35-hour week were designed to kick-start a classroom revolution.

Now, 16 years later, Scotland has been shamed in global league tables showing our pupils are outperformed by peers in former Soviet nations.

Even the academic who was the chief architect of the landmark McCrone agreement admitted it had spawned ‘clock-watching’ staff.

So the latest demand from teaching unions for a pay hike – and a plea for less teaching time – cannot be taken seriously.

Many in the private sector whose pay has been frozen will be astonished at the audacity of the claim for a salary rise of up to 30 per cent.

Local authorities cutting services and preparing to put up council tax are unlikely to give the green light to such an outrageous increase.

But parents will also be appalled at the notion that time at the chalkface should be reduced at a time of growing educational crisis.

The pay claim, however unrealistic in the current economic climate, is also another illustration of the gulf between the private and public sectors.

Union chiefs, resistant to all attempts at reform of failing state schools, are effectively calling for their members to be rewarded for failure.

True, teachers have been ill-served by successive administrations and the SNP’s track record on education over the past decade has been abysmal.

Staff are saddled with mindless red tape and guidelines as they teach in classrooms which are now among the most crowded in the developed world.

While these failures must not be laid solely at the door of the teaching profession, ministers and council chiefs cannot blunder into another McCrone.