TEACHERS in a Scottish city have voted "overwhelmingly" in favour of strike action.
The action is in response to the Glasgow City Council's ongoing programme of education cuts, which have already led to a significant reduction in teacher numbers.
The statutory industrial action ballot was organised by the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country's largest teaching union.
The ballot closed on Tuesday, and 95% of those who voted backed the strike.
The EIS has informed Glasgow City Council of the ballot result and plans to call its members out on strike unless the programme of cuts is stopped and reversed.
This comes after the council proposed a 10% cut to Glasgow's teaching staff.
"The impact of the cuts is already being felt in schools across Glasgow, within the region of three hundred teaching posts having been removed already by the council.
"This is having a profoundly negative impact on the operation of Glasgow’s schools, a detrimental impact on the educational experiences of pupils across the city, some of whom are the most socio-economically deprived in Scotland, and is compounding what can only be described as crisis levels of teacher workload."
According to Andrea, Glasgow City Council needs to abandon its damaging cuts and recommit to collaborating with teachers and teaching unions to provide the best possible education provision for the city's young people.
She added: "In a city that faces significant problems with deprivation, with a large number of young people struggling with poverty-related disadvantage, it is a disgrace that the council continues to push ahead with plans that will further slash the teacher workforce, and damage the learning experience of pupils in Glasgow’s schools.
"This ballot result should encourage the council to give serious pause for thought."
EIS Glasgow local association secretary Jane Gow praised the teachers for their willingness to protect Glasgow's education system.
She said: "Our members in Glasgow have demonstrated, through this ballot result, that they are willing to fight to protect education in Glasgow.
"The teachers in our schools know very well the impact that these cuts are having on learning and teaching, and they have shown that they are willing to take strike action to force the council into a reversal.
"The 10 per cent cut to Glasgow teaching staff, as proposed by the council, will be hugely damaging to young people’s education, and will also pile even more workload onto already overburdened school staff.
“I would like to thank every member who took the time to vote in this hugely important ballot, and for delivering a very clear message to Glasgow City Council to stop these cuts.
"With a 5.5 per cent increase in the Glasgow Council budget this year, and with the cap on Council Tax increases lifted, the Council now has the financial wherewithal to stop the cuts and to instead invest in the education of our young people.
"Glasgow City Council must now end its programme of cuts and quickly, or Glasgow’s teachers will take strike action to defend the quality of education in our schools.”
