On Wednesday, November, 19 at precisely 2.30PM, I and other journalists received an email from the Scottish Government.

The message had the subject line ‘Delivering reduced class contact time’, a reference to the SNP’s manifesto commitment to cut the time teachers spend in front of students by 90 minutes per week. As things stand, nobody expects that pledge to be delivered by the end of this parliament, and that failure is now the focus of current ballots for industrial action by teaching unions.

The opening line of the email said: “Proposals to deliver reduced class contact time for Scotland’s teachers have been announced by Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth.”

It went on to give two examples of alleged “practical options”, but straight away it all looked incredibly vague – especially given that this has now been a standing commitment for nearly five years.

Further down we got the usual blurb of a quote from a minister (in this case education secretary Jenny Gilruth) which claimed that the government is making a “statement of intent to empower Scotland’s teachers".

Finally, there was a ‘Background’ section stating that the apparent proposals were to be set out during a speech to the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland (AHDS) that would be taking place the following day. After this, the email asserted, the proposals would be considered by the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT), which includes trade unions, local councils, and of course the Scottish Government.

If you restrict yourself to looking at this in the simplest possible terms, then it probably all seems positive, and yet the government has faced an angry rebuke from the teaching profession.

Why? Well a large part of the issue is that all of this material was sent to journalists like me before the government........

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