MORE than two-fifths of Scotland’s teachers are working the equivalent of an extra day every week for free, while one in 10 work an unpaid extra two, according to the EIS teaching union.

The figures, from a biannual survey of teachers by the union published at its annual general meeting in Aviemore, found that 44.3 per cent of the 10,789 teachers taking part worked an additional seven hours.

And it found that 11.5 per cent worked 15 over their contract in a typical week, while two thirds reported being “very dissatisfied” or “dissatisfied” with burgeoning workloads.

EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley slammed the SNP Scottish government’s “failure” to meet its own pledges to reduce teachers’ class contact time by 1.5 hours in this parliament.

She said: “It is a story of persistent, excessive workload demands being placed on teachers at all grades and at all stages of their careers.

“This has serious health, safety and wellbeing implications for teachers and is contributing to a worrying upward trend in stress-related illness.

“Four years on from that pledge being made, there has been absolutely no tangible progress towards delivering it and no proposals as to how it will be delivered.

“It is the failure to deliver on this vital promise on class contact time that will lead to the EIS opening a consultative industrial action ballot over workload at our annual general meeting later this week.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said that ministers would continue to work with unions and Cosla to “agree our approach to delivering a reduction in class contact time.

“Funding has been provided on the clear agreement that meaningful progress is made on reducing teacher class contact time.”