A teachers' strike in Scotland for the first time in 20 years moved closer last night after the country's teachers voted unanimously to ballot on industrial action.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union described the move to a strike ballot as a “warning” to the Scottish government and local authorities. Teachers are furious over cuts being made to education budgets, which they fear will lead to job losses, falling standards in the classroom and a failure to cut class sizes.

The EIS President David Drever told the union's conference in Dundee that the situation would deteriorate over the next few years. “There is a potential colossal waste of energy and expense in training new teachers who may be lost to the profession if they are unable to find jobs,” he said.“We need to let people know that we mean business and we cannot allow ourselves to be committed to a three-year cycle of cuts to education budgets.”

In describing the possibility of strike action as a warning, the union is effectively serving notice on the Government and local councils, making it clear that industrial action will not go ahead provided that its demands are met. By raising the stakes, the teachers hope that their key objectives will be met. These include a guarantee that there will be no compulsory redundancies, that class sizes will be cut and there will be no reduction in spending per head on education.

The motion passed at yesterday's conference called on the EIS, the country's biggest teaching union, to organise a strategy to oppose cuts, including ballots for industrial action “across all authorities where negotiations fail to secure significant progress”.

An EIS spokesman said: “This is a warning shot across the bows of all those local authorities who have stated they will fail to implement the Government's intended commitments to reduce class sizes. It also serves as a warning to the Scottish government that they cannot continue to pass the buck to local authorities. They have to take action to ensure that their commitments are delivered across Scotland so we don't see a patchwork of provision based on geography.”

The Scottish government is committed to cutting class sizes for primary one, two and three pupils.

However, last year it signed a concordat with local government which gives individual councils greater flexbility to spend money on their own areas of priority, leaving central Government with far less control. The SNP-led administration at Holyrood has insisted that its budget agreement with councils ensured there was sufficient money to cut class sizes to 18 in the first three years of primary school.

The opposition parties last night blamed the SNP government for forcing the teachers to threaten a strike.

Labour's Education Spokeswoman Rhona Brankin said that the decision reflected the depth of feeling within the teaching profession.

“From Aberdeen to Renfrewshire, the true picture of education services being subjected to the slash and burn policy of the Nationalists is starting to emerge,” she said.

“Alex Salmond might try and laugh off these cuts [but] the parents, teachers and pupils of many Scottish schools are being badly let down by his government's blasé attitude to education.”

The Tories' Education Spokeswoman Liz Smith said: “Due to the SNP's cack-handedness, class sizes are a political issue, and whilst there are some issues to deal with in our education system, threatening to hold to ransom our children in Scotland's first teachers' strike in 20 years is not the responsible way to act.”

The Scottish government last night said that funding to local authorities has risen by more than 13per cent over the next three years in order for councils to cut class sizes and maintain teachers' numbers.

A spokeswoman added: “This government has put in place the policies and provided the necessary funding to reduce class sizes in early years.”

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