SSTA Member Bulletin - 12 June 2025

'Delivering the 90 minutes and protecting secondary teachers' member survey

Reducing class contact time is a crucial step in addressing excessive teacher workload. Despite this, employers have failed to recognise the significance of the promised 90 minutes for teachers’ wellbeing and effectiveness. Alongside other teaching unions, the SSTA has reached the limit of its patience and will now ask members whether they are prepared to escalate the dispute and move toward industrial action.

The SSTA is seeking the following:

That agreement is reached, at the SNCT, ensuring that the full 1.5 hours resulting from the promised reduction in weekly class contact time is used to increase weekly “preparation and correction” time to a minimum of 9 hours, as a key step forward in addressing unsustainable levels of workload.
That agreement is reached, at the SNCT, on the timescales and practical implementation of the reduction in weekly class contact time to a maximum of 21 hours per week.

The 'Delivering the 90 minutes and protecting secondary teachers' members survey will ask members their preparedness to take both action short of strike action and strike action to resolve the ongoing dispute with the employers. The survey will commence on Wednesday 18 June and close on Thursday 28 August.

Reminder - Members are urged to check their personal details to ensure they receive the link to the survey. Email invitations for the consultative survey will be sent to members 'preferred' email address. SSTA recommends using a personal email address as their 'preferred email address' to avoid employer security controls.

Cabinet Secretary at the SSTA Congress

Jenny Gilruth MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, attended the SSTA 80^th Congress at Stirling in May. The Cabinet Secretary addressed Congress and answered questions from delegates. Ms Gilruth spoke on school funding, protecting teacher numbers, ASN, reducing class contact time, pupil behaviour and consequences, mobile phones and SQA. View the Cabinet Secretary address Congress.