By Grant Smith, education reporter

SCOTTISH TEACHERS voted yesterday to threaten to strike if budget cuts bring job losses and prevent class sizes being cut.

Hundreds of delegates from the EIS, the country’s biggest teaching union, unanimously backed a call for a national campaign at its annual conference in Dundee.

Incoming EIS president David Drever told members the Scottish Government and local authorities “need to know that we mean business.”

Teachers were not going to allow themselves to be stuck with a three-year cycle of cuts, he said.

The union has been angered by the impact of the concordat between ministers and councils, which sets out a £35 billion budget for local government from now until 2011.

Some councils have already said they are not receiving enough money and the EIS fears that education—the biggest slice of every authority’s spending—will be hit.

A motion proposed by the union’s national council called for a commitment from the Scottish Government and councils that there would be no compulsory redundancies.

Members also want to see the target of having 53,000 teachers in Scotland maintained, with no reduction in spending per pupil on education.

They are also demanding that the promised reduction in class sizes is delivered and that there will be jobs available for newly qualified teachers.

The delegates voted for the national council to organise a campaign to oppose cuts. This includes the prospect of ballots for industrial action across all local authorities if negotiations fail to secure progress.

No specific time limit has been placed on this, but delegates made it clear they believe the education system is already being harmed and they want to see swift action.

Mr Drever said that the prospects for many newly qualified teachers looking for work were “grim.”

A survey published earlier this week found that almost half of last summer’s probationers have still not found permanent posts.

Mr Drever said, “We have seen also the prospect of job losses and possibly compulsory redundancies in some parts of the country.”

Glasgow delegate Willie Hart warned, “Cuts are right back on the agenda. Right across the country councils are retrenching.”

He gave the example of a school in his area where the number of teachers was falling from 60 to 51.

The conference also heard that none of the 125 new teachers who did their probationary year in Aberdeen was expected to get a permanent job.

Aberdeen delegate Mary Matheson said some schools were dropping subjects from the curriculum and she feared the most vulnerable pupils would get less support.

Robin Irvine, from Renfrewshire, said, “Class sizes will inevitably go up as retiring teachers are not replaced. Next year we will be running a cheap, no-frills service, but we will be expected to go on as if nothing has happened.”

Glasgow’s Hugh Donnelly described the concordat as “a vehicle for the delivery of cuts” and claimed that councils and education directors were shedding only “crocodile tears” at the prospect of job losses.

After the vote an EIS spokesman described it as a warning shot across the bows of councils.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said, “We are disappointed EIS have passed this motion targeted at some local authorities.

Scottish councils’ umbrella body COSLA claimed the union’s action was “sensationalist.” Isabel Hutton, spokeswoman for children and young people, said, “The spending review was tight but our understanding is that many councils intend to increase spending on education in their areas.”