​Scottish Parliament elections 2026

NASUWT Scotland launched our election manifesto in December 2025 seeking to influence all political parties to commit to real change in education to help transform the lives of children.

The manifesto, A Better Deal for Teachers, sets out urgent priorities to tackle excessive workload, declining pay, the crisis in additional support needs provision, and the systemic failures that are driving teachers out of the profession.

It demands investment in schools, colleges and wider support services to ensure every child and young person can thrive.

Since its launch, we have been pushing politicians of all parties to commit to our requests in their own manifestos.

This culminated in a political roundtable at our Scotland Executive Council on 27 February, attended by Jenny Gilruth, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, Miles Briggs, Scottish Conservatives, Ross Greer, Scottish Greens, and Willie Rennie, Scottish Liberal Democrats.

You can download our manifesto on the right/below.

Workload/class contact time and teacher wellbeing

The ballot on class contact time did not reach the legal threshold of 50% of ballot papers being returned in time. This means we are unable to take any formal industrial action.

While a ballot mandate would have helped our negotiating position with the Scottish Government and COSLA, discussions continue under the auspices of the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers’ Reduced Class Contact Time sub-group, which NASUWT sits on.

We welcomed the Deputy First Minister’s announcement in the Scottish Government budget in January of a commitment to protect teacher numbers, a key feature of any effort to deliver class contact time reduction.

In the meantime, a programme of school/cluster visits has been instituted, with local campaigning focusing on pupil behaviour/teacher wellbeing, another key strand of our Better Deal for Scotland’s Teachers campaign.

If you feel it would be helpful, please contact us to arrange a visit to your workplace/area.

Pay

A revised pay offer, described as ‘full and final’, was tabled to teaching unions by local authorities’ employer body COSLA on 5 November 2025. It comprised a pay increase on all SNCT salary points of:

  • 4% from 1 August 2025, which will increase to 4.25% from 1 April 2026;

  • a further 3.25% from 1 August 2026 (to 31 July 2027).

The offer was considered and approved by the NASUWT Salaries Committee on 7 November 2025 and, at a meeting of the SNCT Teachers’ Panel on 11 November 2025, all teacher trade unions agreed to accept the offer.

Since the agreement of the offer, there has also been agreement of a reopener clause for year 2 should inflation increase so much that it impacts on the proposed pay award.

NASUWT will continue to campaign in future years for real-terms pay restoration for teachers, something which Cabinet Secretary Jenny Gilruth has described as ‘a legitimate aim’.

 


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