Officers & Committee 2009

President - Ivan Lees Cliff Park High School

Vice-President vacant

Past President - Ivan Lees

Secretary - Peter Ayers, 40, St. Michaels Way,Brundall,NORWICH, NR13 5PF

Treasurer - Ivan Lees

Minuting Secretary - David Reeve, Oldfield, Tunstead Road, Hoveton, NORWICH, NR12 0YG

Membership Secretary - Peter Ayers

Public Relations Officer - Mrs Julie Oxborough, Cliff Park Community Junior School

Parliamentary Correspondent - Mrs. Julie Oxborough

Equal Opportunities - Ivan Lees

Health & Safety Officer - Ivan Lees

Social Secretary - Cameron Newark

Committee Members: vacant

FUTURE MEETINGS

Welcoming Meeting
Friday, 2nd October 2009 at 8pm

This meeting, at The Star Hotel, Hall Quay, Great Yarmouth, is to welcome teachers new to the area. It is open to all members and partners. Food and drink will be supplied free of charge.

General Meeting

The meeting, open to all members, will be at The Shipr Inn, Tan Lane, Caister-on-Sea at 8pm on Tuesday, 10th November, 2009.
The agenda will be sent to all members.

Annual General Meeting
The meeting, open to all members, will be at The Shipr Inn, Tan Lane, Caister-on-Sea at 8pm on Tuesday, 28th January, 2010.
The agenda will be sent to all members.

NEWSLETTER 3/2009

8th June 2009

(1) General Meeting of 16th June 2009
(2) Conference 2009
(3) Young Teachers
(4) School Representatives
Dear Colleague,
(1) General Meeting of 16th June 2009

Have you attended a General Meeting before? You will receive a friendly welcome at our General Meeting, which will be at
8pm on Tuesday, 16th June, 2009
at The Ship Inn, Tan Lane, Caister-on-Sea.


AGENDA

1. Minutes of the General Meeting of 24th February, 2009

2. Apologies

3. Correspondence

4. Reports of
i. Norfolk Division Council Meeting of 14th March 2009
ii. Norfolk Division Executive Meeting of 19th March 2009

5. Proposal: “Norfolk Division has requested that all Norfolk associations make a voluntary
donation to their funds equal to their annual affiliation fee. Broadland Association accepts
this request and will make this donation at the earliest opportunity.”

6. Comments on Conference 2009

6. Membership – the current position and arrangements for welcoming newly qualified
teachers in Autumn Term 2009. NUT Campaign “Help A Friend Into the NUT”

8. Deputy General Secretary and Vice President elections

9. NUT Advice on Stress – “Keeping Healthy and Happy”

10. Any other business

(2) Conference 2009 - Cardiff

Although I was the only delegate for Broadland Association, there was a healthy number from Norfolk associations. It was an excellent conference with high degree of unity amongst delegates. You will probably have read the report of Conference in the May-June edition of The Teacher, some extracts from The President’s Address in Norfolk News (page 6) and a short report by Kendra Deacon on page 4 of Norfolk News. If you wish to look at further details, I have put the following information on the Broadland page of Norfolk NUT’s website:
• The full text of The President, Martin Reed’s Address to Conference
• The full text of all motions that were carried
• The full text of (Acting) General Secretary Christine Blower’s Address to Conference.
Broadland Association’s page can be found at: http://www.norfolknut.org.uk/ass_Broadland.asp

(3) Young Teachers
The Union is trying to encourage more young teachers (those aged 35 or under) to become active in the Union. It was encouraging to see many young teachers attend this year’s Cardiff Conference Although Broadland Association is keen to encourage members to attend events for young teachers, such as paying full expenses for them to attend the Young Teachers’ Conference (which has just taken place at Stoke Rochford), there seems to be a reluctance from young teachers in Broadland.
There is a Young Teachers’ section in Norfolk, with events arranged from time to time, which is an excellent way to get involved in an informal way with union activities. If you feel that you would like to meet like-minded union members, please contact (young teacher) Kendra Deacon – 01362 698160 or by e-mail kendradeacon@yahoo.co.uk

(4) School Representatives
If this letter has been sent to a named person in a school, then that person is recorded as the NUT Representative or Correspondent in that school. A recent check on these names has shown that some of this data is out of date and an attempt to request more recent data has not been very successful.
If there is no named person on the envelope for this mailing, or if it is incorrect, please will you help by notifying me? See below for contact details.
Information from the Union can only be of use if it is seen by our members.
Those who do not belong to a union often give as a reason that they were never asked by a colleague, and so it is important that they are aware of the benefits of membership. A School Representative can approach a new teacher to make them aware of these benefits if they are not in membership.
Although I shall be sending a Membership Pack to all newly qualified teachers whose names have been given to my by Norfolk County Council, this information is often incomplete, and it would be helpful if all new colleagues are approached and asked whether they are in union membership.
Newly Qualified teachers are often reluctant to join a union because of the additional expense at a time when money is tight. With this in mind the Union is offering four terms’ membership for £1. Please see page 12 of the May-June edition of The Teacher for full details and inform any new teachers in your school of this offer. (There will also be an offer to any new member, from September 2009, of membership for four terms at the cost of three terms’ membership. This will be advertised as ‘Help a friend into the NUT’ in the July-August edition of The Teacher.)



CONFERENCE 2009

ADDRESS GIVEN BY PRESIDENT MARTIN REED TO
ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2009

Conference, to stand before you today as President of the National Union of Teachers is a great honour. And Cardiff - where I spent much of my youth and went to University. - is the best setting I can imagine to set out my perspective on the Union's future and my vision for education.

For the Welsh, education has been a powerful and inspiring force, seen always as creative, progressive and, above all, liberating. From education we draw life and hope.

I grew up just a few miles away in the seaside town of Porthcawl. I attended New Road Primary and Porthcawl Comprehensive Schools, schools which shaped my life and built my confidence. They gave me a desire to explore ideas and a love of learning as a means of changing society with all its injustices and all its inequalities.

They inspired my ambition to be a teacher like my primary school teacher, Mrs Thomas. She lives on in the memory, not by statue or glowing popular biography but by the dedication and enthusiasm she generated in helping me to succeed.

I will never forget her. She was an exceptional teacher. She fostered in me a love of words, of language and the beauty of writing. Many figures in history have influenced my life but she will always be part of my educational soul. Mrs Thomas and many other of my teachers were educational liberators then, as their successors are now.

The belief in education was strong in my family. In the 1930s, at the age of 13, my father started work underground as a miner in a pit near Pontypool. One of six sons, he can still tell you, at age 90, of his family's struggle for survival during the great depression. His mother didn't know from where the next meal would come from. He and his brothers scavenged for coal in the waste tips. His formal educational opportunities were therefore brief.

My parents were married shortly after 1945. My mother also had a limited access to learning. They witnessed poverty; unemployment; and social despair. Theirs was a society in which educational opportunity was scarce and where infant mortality, chronic ill health, malnutrition and poor housing were endemic.

In their eyes, the escape route from the travails of life in South Wales lay in the inherent power of education. Only education would provide a chance to compete in a world built upon inequality and social hierarchy. Only education would provide their children with an alternative to the pit or the steelworks.

For my parents, the day that I graduated from University was the realisation of their determination to give me a life chance. I will forever be proud of them and profoundly proud of their belief in education.

Conference, in 2008 we lost another powerful advocate of a properly funded and resourced state education system, our General Secretary, Steve Sinnott. This was devastating for his wife Mary, his children Stephen and Kate, and indeed to all of us. Steve was respected across the world. He was at the centre of the international struggles to provide education for all and to achieve the Millennium Goals.

Steve was a doughty campaigner for human rights and trade unionism. He set us a proud example. No history of our Union would be complete without a tribute to the boundless energy of a man who, at every turn, would challenge inequality, injustice and poverty.

Steve's Liverpool background underpinned his association with the Union's traditional support for children from the most deprived social backgrounds. He understood the need for every child to have a life chance. He recognised the importance of a good local school for every child and for every community.

Last year, when we celebrated his life at the Queen Elizabeth Centre, we left knowing how a person can live a dream and make a difference. Steve gave his everything to the Union. He valued everyone as an individual. He was totally committed to the pursuit of unity within the Union and across the profession. As your President I pledge to work towards those same objectives.

Steve died at the start of a crucial campaign to defend the living standards of teachers. When Christine Blower became Acting General Secretary, she spoke with the strength and the clarity so urgently needed. She took on the leadership with the greatest distinction. On the 24th April when our members so magnificently supported our call for action she led from the front with courage. Christine, we thank you for your leadership and we thank you for your strength.

Conference, the collapse of Merrill Lynch towards the end of 2008 signalled the beginning of systemic failure within the international banking system. The impact of the global economic recession deepened and intensified during the early months of 2009. The collapse of the financial system led to billions of tax payers’ money being committed to supporting our own banking institutions.

In that same period, the Government, a Labour Government, continued to promote the culture of the market in education. I say to you, what irony that the collapse of the financial market led the same government to nationalise the banks. Now, with the bubble burst, we face the awesome reality of soaring unemployment, loss of homes, further erosion of our industrial base and a falling GDP. We face the prospect worldwide of 200 million workers plunged into extreme poverty.

To rescue banks, the Government invested astronomical amounts of money, building a massive national debt and leading inevitably to increases in taxation and the spectre of swingeing cuts in public spending. This crisis may not be of our making but its consequences will have a profound impact on public services in general and, in particular, for schools, teachers and children.

This Union cares profoundly about the soul of our society. If public investment is acceptable to our banks, it is most certainty acceptable to our schools. Deregulation ruined our banking system; we must not let it ruin our education system.

Our Union remains the powerful force needed for the protection and promotion of progressive education for all children, regardless of social class, race or background. But if we are to make positive change in the future, now is the time to engage all those who view with growing despair and disgust the creed of greed which suffocates the equality of opportunity that we champion.

Much has changed in the last 12 months. Many have seen the need to re-evaluate simplistic, shallow and common concepts of narrow individualism. Society is not abstract: it is:

• children, their parents and the communities in which we work; and

• colleagues with whom we share our professional responsibilities.

To us, to you, as trade unionists, these are material and tangible constructs - we have responsibilities towards each other. The hedonistic pursuit of pure self interest is irreconcilable with the simple ideals we all share, such as professional care, the understanding that teachers can change children's lives or merely the confidence which we can impart to our pupils. We reject the arrogant, discredited philosophy that there is no such thing as society.

To liberate the young, our schools need resources. So what then is the outlook for the funding of education in England and Wales over the next few years? Even before we experienced the trauma of financial turbulence and banking collapse, we knew that it would be tough.

Annual increases in the Minimum Funding Guarantee for the current three year funding period are less than the Government's own assessment of the pressures on schools' average costs. This settlement is already causing difficulties as schools struggle to keep pace.

My local authority, the East Riding of Yorkshire, has received a Dedicated School Budget of an estimated £175.4 million. On the surface, that represents a £3.4 million cash increase or 2 per cent growth, but look below the headline figure, however, and we see budget pressures of over £8 million and reductions in overall spending of over £4.5 million.

These are real cuts now: real threats to teachers’ jobs and the quality of local education provision. The reductions are mirrored in overall public spending plans up to 2014. This will be replicated across England and the problems in Wales will be exacerbated, with children here in Wales receiving, per pupil, £496 less than those in England.

In January 2009, the House of Commons Education Select Committee warned that this year we would see only minimal growth in education spending. This will pose immediate challenges to our Union. We must be ready to defend jobs and state education against the cuts that will undoubtedly be promoted.

And such is the cost of the rescue of the financial services sector that, whichever party forms the next government, there will be enormous pressure on our public sector. Pensions and pay will both be under threat. No one in this hall should assume that the teachers’ pension scheme is safe. There are already the usual clarion voices for pensions in the public sector to be reviewed. We could face moves to increase the teachers’ contribution or reduction in benefits. We might even face cuts in pay in absolute terms, not just real terms.

We must be prepared and ready to defend our pay and our pensions. We must be prepared to defend every school and every teacher. If Gordon Brown can find the money to support financially struggling private schools with taxpayers’ money, he can certainly support state schools.

Colleagues, our Conference slogan is "Promoting Teacher Unity and State Education". The two concepts are inextricably linked. Only with a united and independent teaching profession can we defend publicly provided, high quality education.

Outside this hall, not too far from here, and distant from the educational world, there are those who want to set back the clock. They want accelerated privatisation. They want deregulation of teachers' pay and working conditions. They want the further atomization of school structures. Some even hope that every school will be an Academy.

These are the reactionary ideologues who threaten our members. These are the public school educated politicians; right-wing think-tank policy figures; and the free-market philosophers. If placed in positions of political influence, I doubt that they would want to collaborate with trade unions because such an approach would be inimical to their ideological psychology. I don't see them entertaining social partnerships.

This year we face the gravest recession since the 1980s and, sadly, the prospect of a return to thinly veiled and disguised Thatcherism. Within 18 months we could have a change of government. Mr Cameron's so-called "vision for the future" for education, with its thousands of independent comprehensive schools – itself, colleagues, a contradiction in terms - will take us back to the middle ages, and certainly not into a "New Age".

But why does the Conservative Party seem always ready to revert to type? The formula is wearily familiar:

• ignore the evidence of what works;

• deride school achievement but say you support teachers;

• praise the professional judgement of teachers on the one hand but insist on the teaching of synthetic phonics on the other; and

• say that you support education as a top priority – yes, even as Michael Gove recently said, "as a motor for a 21st Century knowledge economy"; and then

• trail massive cuts in education spending.

I say this because according to the opinion polls, we are likely to have a Conservative Government next year.

And let’s be clear. It's going to take all our strength - teachers, parents, government, governors, all those interested in education and all those committed to equality of opportunity – to prevent the dismantling of our publicly funded education system. We must not allow the systematic deregulation of education or the dismantling of our schools’ system. We must create a broad alliance that reaches out to parents; an alliance that involves the wider trade union movement, pro-comprehensive pressure groups and - yes - our colleagues in the other teachers’ organisations.
Unity with the other teachers’ organisations in these circumstances is not a luxury. It’s not even an abstract moral ideal. It is an imperative. We need unity to:

• promote our vision of local families of schools;

• to stop the direction of travel towards privatisation of all our schools and services; and

• to respond if, in 2010, our education service steps into the unknown.

The case for teacher unity has been made repeatedly at our conferences. It has never been more needed. It would signal the birth of a powerful force to speak up for teachers and to speak up for state education. Yes - it would require compromise and even sacrifice - but the rewards would be rich and the gains immeasurable.

So, once more, we extend the hand of unity. But if we are to create the possibility of a single teachers’ organisation we must strive more than ever to recruit and build our membership. That's part of the jigsaw of change.

This Union represents teachers at all levels and in all types of school. That diversity makes us strong. It makes us confident; a union which teachers join because they see us as representing and speaking for the profession. In making recruitment a key component of our culture, we move back not one step from our goal of professional unity.

Conference, despite the economic gloom surrounding us, this year’s spring term has been one of hope – hope for teachers’ professional unity – for professional unity in action.

The joint conference organised between ourselves and the National Association of Head Teachers was unity in action; a powerful and dynamic example of professionals working together to achieve a common goal - the elimination of ‘top down’, imposed, unloved, unwanted, unnecessary and unreliable tests that have done so much to damage our children's learning and indeed to damage learning itself.

Think of the prize when we win our campaign, because we will.

In primary schools, teachers and leaders will, at long last, have received the message that they are trusted to do the job. Sarah, a parent, yesterday, sent an email to my local radio station, Radio Humberside. She said:

“My 10 year old son is due to take his SATs tests in May this year. He has a Beano calendar in his bedroom and recently he turned over the page for April.

“As he was doing this he said to me ‘Mummy, I don't want to turn the next page for May when it comes because that's when we have the SATs’.

“I reassured him at the time, but then left the room and cried in the bathroom. I am so anxious for my son, he is very, very worried and almost terrified of the forthcoming tests - it's all he is thinking about.

“Shame on the Government for making my little boy, only 10 years of age come under so much pressure.”

Sarah, we agree with you and the National Union of Teachers is with you.

This campaign is about more than raising the morale and motivation of teachers. Remember the powerful evidence gathered by the research we commissioned from Cambridge University and launched in Parliament last December. It said:

“What motivates teachers to remain within the profession and to give of their best is the buzz of ‘a magic moment’; when the ‘penny finally drops’; when the pupil's puzzled gaze gives way to a smile of recognition. It is in these ‘magic moments’ that teaching meets learning. When that meeting of minds becomes an expectation, rather than a rare occurrence. Teaching reaps its own rewards and learning is no longer the servant of token incentives.”

Conference, our joint campaign with the NAHT is about restoring magic moments to the primary classroom, as everyday events not as rarities.

Conference, let me tell you this. I shall be proud as President, alongside our colleagues in the NAHT, to help lead the campaign to get rid of - at long last - imposed, nationally prescribed testing. Conference, the Government - whichever Government it is in 2010 - will have to understand one obvious fact: because of our boycott carried out with the NAHT, there will be no National Curriculum testing forced on our schools; not in 2010 nor indeed in any year after that.

And I call on our colleagues in the other teachers’ organisations and the TUC, to join our united campaign. What a boost that would give not only to professional unity but to the teaching profession as a whole.

Conference, there would be no better message to give to the political parties in the run up to the next general election than that our profession is strong, confident and prepared to stand up for all that is best in education, whatever government is elected.

Do you know what? Our state school system is a wonderful asset. So why, oh why, is there an obsession with talking it down? Why do we have the unbalanced reporting about state schools? The criticism of state schools is like a strange virus, and this virus seems to infect the intellectual educational establishment: journalists, academics, even Chief school inspectors and indeed Government ministers – all are victims of this strange and puzzling disorder.

Results have never been higher. Teachers, as you know, meet never-ending demands with year-on-year success. Yet from all sides, teachers are attacked and their work denigrated. For the last 20 years teachers have been cajoled, imposed upon, harangued and, it seems, praised only when politically convenient.

The basic premise underlying all of this Government's reforms seems to be that unless teachers’ noses are kept to the grindstone, then they will revert to complacency, with redemption only through the application of big sticks and small carrots. Are they not blind to the reality that for thousands of children, schools are safe havens, places of security and sanity in disturbed communities?

What neither the Government nor the Tories seem to understand is the absolutely obvious - you can't get anyone to do anything properly if you do not trust them!

I say to you that the teaching profession is long overdue for a new deal based on trust. Professional development, including sabbaticals and funding, should be an entitlement for every teacher. Class sizes should meet pupils' needs. School evaluation systems should be based on support and not upon punishment.

Chief Inspector of Schools, Christine Gilbert, says teachers are boring. The General Teaching Council in England says that teachers need a code of conduct to tell them how to behave, even when they are off duty. The Training and Development Agency for Schools draws up ever longer lists of professional competencies for trainee teachers. The Government says that not enough teachers are disciplined for incompetence. The newspapers, the media, are consistent in their denigration of teachers.

Is it not surprising that so many teachers leave the profession within the first three years of their work? Is it no longer possible to talk with pride about the achievements of our teachers, our schools and children? Can they not find the moral and intellectual integrity to recognise the fact that actually, our state education system is as intrinsically wonderful as the National Health Service, available to all, regardless of wealth or social status?

If they don't have the honesty to speak for our schools, then we must and we will. Our pride is in the professionalism of our members and of qualified teachers. Our pride is in their ceaseless dedication and ambition for the children in their care. It is in the job they do, day in, day out, with no media fanfare and with no fuss. It is because they care and endure so much of this shabby criticism that the National Union of Teachers will always speak in their defence.

Teachers need something different. They need their voices heard. We need a self-confident profession; sure that it has the trust of Government.

The prize is there for this or any future government: to raise the status of the teaching profession and to get rid of tests, targets, tables, OFSTED inspections, performance management and all the other oppressive machinery of distrust built up over the last 20 years.

You and I have faith in those teachers. We have faith in those schools. Today, the Union celebrates their successes and we celebrate the achievements of their pupils.

As Senior Vice-President, I visited many schools and teachers in England and Wales. I’d like to tell you about at least some of them. I’d like to write some alternative headlines about the astonishing successes of community schools. Schools like Hilltop Special School in Gateshead, a school working with children with learning and physical disabilities.

I tell you today, these children have the support of inspired teachers who meet their complex needs and give them happy childhoods; teachers who understand their communities and contribute enormously to their well being. Their worth is not measured by calculators - with financial return per hour - but rather by dedication, by care and by trust.

These are the people who our media should talk about. And if they don’t, then you and I must do so instead. I was moved by the warmth of spirit of those teachers, some of whom are in this hall today. They are the real soul of our Union. They are without doubt and with pride the professionals we salute today.

Colleagues, we live in an era of imposition, of assessment and control; an era in which the professional skills of teachers have been denigrated and discounted. It is the age of clip board supervisors, wandering – in many cases aimlessly – school corridors and ticking boxes on teacher performance – an activity devoid of meaning and frankly wasteful of time. It is an age of pseudo accountability in which the teacher is a pawn in a marketised construct that speaks in the crudest terms about targets for schools and targets for teachers.

The growth of filing cabinets in school offices, packed with year on year performance management planning for staff, is an industry in itself, and to what effect?

Or, alternatively, ask the 30,000 teachers who were robbed of their management allowance payments at the beginning of 2009! Ask them if they feel liberated by the end of salary safeguarding!

Ask the primary teachers if they are overjoyed with the prospect of carrying out even more responsibility than ever before, without any salary recognition at all!

Maybe we need to speak to the thousands of teachers who are turned down in threshold or upper pay scale progression, often by the flimsiest of criteria.

Conference, we say today that this is a disgrace. The NUT rejects the heads-you-win, tails-you-lose approach to rewarding teachers. That's why we stood up for the profession on 24 April of last year. The Union stood up for the young teachers struggling to pay their rent or simply pay their college loans. We spoke up for all teachers and the legitimate defence of their living standards.

This year, we must intensify our efforts to restore proper recognition of and respect for the professionalism of teachers. We must work with even greater determination to challenge the culture of imposition. That culture has created a lost generation of teachers who have:

• left the profession early in their careers;

• suffered mental ill health brought on by the relentless demands of the system; and

• teachers who are victims of bullying and the constant stress of intrusive de-professionalising regimes.

These are the lost generations of teachers; dedicated and in many cases, experienced teachers, driven from their profession by unrealistic objectives and imposed top-down target setting and observation.

Colleagues, don’t accept the deceit that this is how it has to be. Don’t listen to the spin that teachers can cope, they will be fine, they may just even thrive under this relentless downward pressure of accountability and control. Tell that to the teachers who haven’t even the strength left to attend their own leaving functions at school because their health has been so badly damaged by their work culture.

The human tragedy – and that’s what it is – of a disposable profession has to be challenged at the point of origin - intolerable work-load demands; punitive classroom observation protocols; endless and mindless bureaucratic target setting; mechanical lesson planning; pro-formas; and an inspection system, which leaves teachers anxious, stressed and frankly bewildered.

We say enough is enough. We must commit ourselves to combating that inequity. We owe it to those who have left our profession. We owe it more to those who remain. We also owe it to the students, the teachers of the future.

This is a strong union based upon principles that bind us together. We share values that we hold dear. In an age of disposability and when disposability has been commonplace, our principles have remained resolute. At a time when political parties have rewritten their social and political values - in some cases, on a week to week basis - we have maintained our trust in equality and the pursuit of progress for all. Our commitment to equal opportunities is at the centre of our history.

History has shaped and moulded the educational soul of your and my Union. We remain committed to the principle that our children are entitled to be taught by those who are properly and professionally trained to teach. This aim was enshrined in the very earliest constitutions of the Union. We remain unrepentant in our desire. It has always been at the very heart of what we have fought for. It is borne out by the findings of international research.

The struggle for a properly qualified teaching profession is about safeguarding the education of children. It cannot be achieved without properly paid, qualified and trained teachers whose status stands alongside comparable professions. It is about fundamental trade union principles and ensuring the highest level of educational opportunity for the children in our care.

We will remain firm and committed to an ideal that is part of our heart and soul as a Union. I believe it makes us proud to be part of this Union. The belief that every child deserves a qualified teacher is shared with other teacher organisations worldwide.

Conference, our education system doesn't exist in isolation or a vacuum. It’s not immune from the changing priorities and ambitions of national governments. The international trade union movement is able to chart the interrelationship and continuity of educational policy development between different sovereign states. Unfortunately, the influence of the World Bank is far reaching. We should not be surprised then to find projects such as Academies in other parts of the world.

I believe… you believe that education is a prerequisite for human dignity, freedom and solidarity world-wide. It is a concept without boundary… a concept without border. It has the capacity to change lives, challenge poverty, bigotry, racism and discrimination. It provides the engine for creating a society based upon tolerance, equal opportunity, the championing of diversity, the promotion of human rights and the dignity of the individual.

Humanity is global. Children are not an international currency but an international force. Education should not be a product that we measure in terms of exchange value or commodity pricing.

For us, education and the opportunities it brings children are incredibly simple. We view state education not as a commodity to be bought, sold or traded, but rather as the international language of liberation and hope: Liberation from the kind of impoverishment that shapes the lives of so many children in what is termed ‘the developing world’.

As Chair of the International Relations, Peace & Disarmament Sub-Committee of our Union, I have witnessed the work that we have done to foster, in alliance with others, the agenda of ending the desperation of so many of the world’s children. Our – your - collective voice as a Union has helped promote that international agenda. Our work goes on. With seventy-five million children still receiving no formal education worldwide, we still have much to do.

Conference, the watchword of this government – and you’ve heard it before - is 'modernising'. Politicians and newspaper editors have criticised us for failing to move with the times and embrace the brave new world of Academies and Trusts. Our refusal to concede the employment of unqualified staff as teachers is another example of our inertia.

The reality is that the so-called modernisation of education is somewhat different. It is intended to:

• segregate and divide our schools from each other;

• establish competition between our schools as the modus operandi of a funding system;

• end national pay and conditions of service arrangements;

• consolidate flexible models of operation, in which, no doubt, teachers’ salaries will be contained or reduced;

• increase the potential for selection; and

• eliminate local accountability to communities and parents.

For the modernisers, ‘modernisation’ means selling off our schools and handing over the control of governing bodies to faceless corporate entities that understand little of the community, little of the people, little of the social and economic environment, or indeed – heaven forbid - the children themselves.

The outcome of such modernisation will mean the loss of coherent national educational planning coupled with vibrant local authorities co-ordinating and co-operating in the provision of a high level of public service at community level. It will be a return to the voluntarism of the Victorian era.

The word ‘modernisation’ is used to disguise real intent. It is remote from the progressive alternatives that we advance. We believe that every child and every community has the right to and not just the privilege of a good local school. We propose a funding system that meets the need of every child, both in urban and rural communities, with the resources to meet their potential. Our expectation is a first rate education service, meeting the needs of all children and confident as a facilitator of progress. We understand the need to modernise, but our concept of modernisation implies, by definition, investment and an end to the fragmentation of our education services.

Our vision of the future is a national education service - funded by taxation - and locally accountable to parents and children by virtue of coherent, transparent and democratic public control. It is an education service with, at its heart, schools that are not subject to the vagaries of the market with all the attendant risks and insecurities. And our vision for the NUT in the 21st Century is a modern union working in partnership with government that trusts teachers’ professionalism but places no limitations upon dialogue.

We do not use the term 'modernisation' loosely. This union has a legacy of change and a history of progressive reform. Our Union will never abandon that commitment. For us, it is part of who we are.

Public sector education faces real challenges in the next few years. These challenges will require us to stand together as one; to be firm in our convictions and most of all to be sure in our resolve. Our Union, and you as our activists, remain a powerful force for what is just and for what is fair.

Colleagues, you are the people who understand at first hand what a good local school for every child means in your communities. You understand how local schools bring hope and bring opportunity, in many cases to children and families who face social and economic hardship. You know… we do share a common identity and a common DNA to create a society in which every child has the right to succeed.

The history of our Union shows that we can play a major part in promoting education for all, and not the few. In challenging those who dismiss education as a tool of social progress or who see it as commodity, for sale or for profit, we assert our vision for a better world for the next generation and beyond. We are strong because our values and our ambitions are right; equality and a belief in the dynamic power of teachers to change for the better the lives of those in their care, regardless of social status. We are a diverse union, with a wide array of opinions. That is what makes us outward looking and confident.

I believe that when we leave this conference, we'll do so with an even greater sense of purpose for the fight we have ahead. Education and the rights of our children are truly marvellous principles for which we should struggle. Through knowing our history, we better understand the strategic aims. We are and remain proud of our schools and their teachers.

Our message is clear. The National Union of Teachers is open for business. We are united; we are – every one of us - determined to succeed. We are ready to meet the challenges of the future without hesitation. We are ready to fulfil our obligations, as we have since we were founded in 1870. Be in no doubt, we remain the greatest advocates for progress.

Mary Macarthur, founder of the National Federation of Women Workers, and Leader of the Women's Chain Makers’ strike in 1910, said "there is nothing in the world like believing in a cause and fighting for it." That's how I feel about being your President. At the outset I said that this is a great honour to hold this Office. The defence of the state education service in England and Wales is no mean task. Being President of this great Union is a major and rewarding responsibility. I look forward to these challenges - but most of all I look forward to working with the staff of the Union and with the local officers who make this Union what it is... a teachers' organisation of world class.

Colleagues, to those outside this hall we say, every one of us, we stand together as one Union - a great Union - our Union - the National Union of Teachers.

MOTIONS CARRIED AT ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2009

EDUCATION: GENERAL SECTION

PRIORITY MOTION: TESTING AND ASSESSMENT – JOINT NAHT/NUT (NUT/NAHT) CAMPAIGN

Conference welcomes the joint NAHT/NUT (NUT/NAHT) campaign and endorses the joint statement on testing and assessment.

Conference believes these proposals represent the future of assessment in primary schools and that, from 2010, tests at Key Stages 1 and 2 should be optional.

Whilst welcoming the decision to remove National Curriculum testing at Key Stage 3, Conference rejects the Government’s argument for maintaining them in primary schools.

Conference calls on the Executive/National Council to broaden the joint campaign to secure the end of a testing regime which is not fit for purpose.

Conference recognises that the strategies deployed to date, including lobbying, letters to MPs, parents’ questionnaires and local campaigning, provide a positive base for attracting widespread support.

Conference asserts, therefore, that unless the Government sees fit to respond to overwhelming evidence for ending the statutory tests at Key Stages 1 and 2, joint action will need to be taken to prevent their continuation.

Conference instructs the Executive/National Council to:

i. step up the joint campaign to halt primary school testing;

ii. seek the support of all the unions, including those in the TUC, for the campaign;

iii. seek support from the widest possible range of organisations, including parents, governors and parliamentary parties;

iv. once all other reasonable avenues have been exhausted, ballot all relevant members for joint action to boycott the Key Stages 1 and 2 statutory tests, for the academic year 2009-2010, if the Government refuses to remove them.

SATS, TESTING AND LEAGUE TABLES

Conference wholeheartedly welcomes the abolition of SATs at Key Stage 3, and believes this has the potential to lead to a major improvement in the quality of education in Key Stage 3.

Conference notes that this year has seen an even greater increase in 'anti-SATs’ reports in the media and there is widespread recognition among teachers, parents, academics and the wider public that SATs have a harmful effect on education and on children.

Conference notes in particular the debacle surrounding the marking of the tests by private firm ETS. Conference condemns:

1. the insult to the work done by teachers and students who spent time and effort preparing for and completing the tests;

2. the low quality and inaccurate marking; and

3. the administrative chaos that led to late delivery of papers, causing difficulties and stress for students, parents and markers.

Conference further condemns the fact that, while ETS has lost the £175 million contract to mark in the future, and was compelled to repay £30 million, large amounts of taxpayers’ money have been wasted.

Conference notes that these continued problems with the testing regime highlight the danger of relying on ‘high stakes’ testing where a few raw figures form the basis of judging the whole education system, and which results in the labelling of students.

Conference particularly condemns the naming of schools that perform below a ‘target level’ as failing schools when those same schools are amongst the best in the country in terms of providing a value added education.

Conference believes that a fundamental problem with the current testing and assessment system is the over-reliance on levelling children’s work and using those levels to create often unrealistic targets for children and teachers. SATS results have frequently been used to monitor the outcome of this targeting, frequently creating extra workload for teachers and in many cases used as the basis for a teacher’s performance management.

Conference welcomes the joint decision by the Executive and the National Association of Head Teachers to hold the 11 February conference on the future of assessment and believes that the agreed joint statement arising from the conference provides the basis for a united campaign against National Curriculum Tests.

Conference welcomes the select committee on schools, which produced a report in May 2008 condemning the testing regime. The report found that:

(i) there is a tendency to teach to the test;

(ii) there is a reliance on classroom practices of low educational value, shallow learning and a low level of innovation;

(iii) there is short-term success at the expense of deeper understanding;

(iv) at times of the year almost half of the teaching time in year 6 is dedicated to preparing for tests;

(v) universities find children are unprepared for the rigours of higher education;

(vi) children are reluctant to take risks and to take a critical stance: they are used to being rewarded for dogmatic rule-following;

(vii) school children in England are among the most tested in the world;

(viii) international tests show that there has been no significant change in performance.

Conference rejects the proposals to replace the current system with one where children take a test when ready, as this will not see a reduction in the pressure to achieve a national target and will not reduce the pressure to teach to the test.

Conference further notes that the decision to continue with Key Stage 2 SATs is driven by the perceived need to maintain league tables.

Conference therefore deplores the failure to abolish SATs at Key Stage 2, despite continuing evidence that they distort children’s educational experience.

Conference condemns:

a. the naming of schools that perform below a ‘target level’ as failing schools when those same schools are amongst the best in the country in terms of providing a value added education;

b. the chaos and waste of public money surrounding the marking of the tests by private firm ETS, as well as the insult to the work done by teachers and students who spent time and effort preparing for and completing the test;

c. rejects the proposals to replace the current system at Key Stage 2 with one where children take a test when ready, as this will not see a reduction in the pressure to achieve a national target and will not reduce the pressure to teach to the test;

d. the way that students are labelled by unreliable test scores, and these scores are then used to set children and make decisions about which courses they are entitled to study;

e. the way the Government use the test scores, not for the benefit of the children and their progress, but to monitor teachers, pit schools against each other and as a tool to further privatise parts of our education system;

f. the APP, as well as any other assessment method which may be used as a replacement to SATS which requires teachers to level work or carry out a summative assessment more frequently than once in an Academic Year per subject.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

A. work with other organisations and individuals opposed to SATs, to build a broad based campaign for the abolition of SATs, and the introduction of educationally sound methods of assessment;

B. to campaign positively with other teachers’ organisations for a boycott of Key Stages 1 and 2 National Curriculum tests with parents, head teachers and among the wider community, building on the joint NUT/NAHT statement on the future of assessment;

C. support the launch of a national petition against SATs;

D. publicise recent research by The Children’s Society on the unhappiness among our children, as part of our campaign to highlight the negative effects of SATs and high stakes testing on children;

E. carry out a survey and, if appropriate, an indicative ballot of members to ascertain their views on how the union could continue its campaign to abolish SATs, and build a boycott with other organisations;

F. as a matter of urgency, develop publicise and campaign for alternative and more effective methods of assessment;

G. call on the government to act upon the comprehensive and authoritative Primary Review, co-ordinated by Cambridge University School of Education, and other extensive research, which clearly demonstrate the adverse academic and social impact of testing on young learners;

H. call on the Government to recognise that the current testing system and its impact are fatally flawed.

OFSTED

Conference reaffirms its belief that OFSTED inspections have wide ranging detrimental effects on the running of schools which go far beyond actual inspection visits.

Conference notes with concern OFSTED’s proposals for school inspection from September 2009. In particular, Conference rejects OFSTED’s proposals to conduct “no notice” inspections; to operate a highly differentiated cycle of inspections; and to link inspection judgements explicitly to the test and examination results achieved by schools.

Conference believes that “no notice” inspections will exacerbate further the constant anxiety which many members have experienced since the introduction of the two day notice period and will increase the distorting effect this has had on the leadership and management of schools.

Conference rejects the proposed arrangements for differentiating the inspection cycle according to the outcomes of schools’ previous inspections.

Conference condemns the proposal for some “satisfactory” schools to receive a monitoring visit between 12 and 18 months after the inspection and for the frequency of monitoring visits to be increased for schools in both of the OFSTED “concern” categories. Conference believes that increased monitoring visits will do nothing but add to the stress and damage the morale of those working in such schools.

Conference further believes that the linkage of test and examination results with OFSTED inspection grades will penalise unduly schools serving disadvantaged areas.

Conference asserts that the current inspection arrangements already over-emphasise such results, with the effect that many schools in special measures or with a notice to improve are situated in areas of social deprivation.

Conference condemns the notion of detaching the context of a school when assessing its effectiveness in terms of pupil achievement, given the substantial evidence on the link between pupil outcomes and socio-economic background.

Conference therefore calls upon the Executive to:

1. reinvigorate the campaign for the abolition of OFSTED and the introduction of a bottom-up school self-evaluation model by conducting a poster campaign and a petition to be presented to the Secretary of State;

2. continue to monitor the effects of OFSTED inspections on schools through the collection of information from school representatives and use and publicise the information gathered to support the campaign for the abolition of OFSTED;

3. update the Union’s OFSTED guidance for members, which includes guidance on action under Union rule where any excessive workload generated by the new OFSTED inspection framework or by National Challenge have been unresolved;

4. call for the immediate halt to the unfair and unjust practice of categorising schools.

OPPOSITION TO ACADEMY AND TRUST SCHOOL STATUS

Conference deplores the continued and inappropriate involvement of the private sector in schools and education services. Conference believes that the recent turbulence in financial markets and institutions and the failures of private sector companies demonstrate the dangers of businesses or individuals having control over publicly funded schools. Conference believes that publicly funded schools should be answerable to the public and not to an individual or group of persons.

Conference condemns, therefore, the Government’s continued promotion of the academies programme, including the decision to retain the target of 400 academies. Conference further condemns the Government’s disgraceful use of the National Challenge programme to force schools to become academies, or National Challenge Trusts, as an alternative to closure.

Conference disputes the attempts to present academies as “the future of secondary education” with cross-political party support. Conference re-iterates that the academies initiative remains an unproven and divisive educational experiment, opposed by members of all political parties as well as teachers, parents, and governors.

Conference notes recent changes to the academies programme including a greater involvement of local authorities, universities, the churches and voluntary organisations as sponsors; changes in the funding arrangements for pupils excluded from academies; the requirement that new academies follow the National Curriculum in English, maths, science and IT and are involved in local 14-19 education partnerships.

Conference believe these changes have come about because of the growing opposition to the academies programme. Conference notes however that the essential element in the academies programme of privatising the management of state funded schools has not changed.

Conference urges the Government to bring academies back within the local authority family of schools.

Conference regrets that many local authorities have failed to provide leadership in supporting their schools and promoting local democratic involvement in education. Conference regrets also that many local authorities have adopted without resistance the Government’s misguided “choice and diversity” agenda and its position that they should be commissioners rather than providers of services.

Conference welcomes the establishment of the School Organisation and Reorganisation Working Group to advise the Executive on issues such as academies, trusts, federations and competitions for new schools.

Conference instructs the Executive to provide further information, guidance and campaigning materials for divisions on these issues, including on negotiating with local authorities.

Conference welcomes the Union’s role within the TUC in speaking up for public services in general and in opposing academies in particular, and for working with TUC affiliates on the Model Trade Union Recognition Agreement for Academies. Conference congratulates the TUC on its decision to affiliate to the Anti Academies Alliance.

Conference instructs the Executive to continue to give priority to supporting the work of the Anti Academies Alliance in working with teachers, parents, governors, trade unionists and their organisations in campaigning against the individual academies and the academies programme nationally through high profile events and conferences, such as the international conference on privatisation early in 2009.

Conference re-affirms its commitment to supporting members working in academies and trust schools in terms of protecting their salaries, conditions of service and job security, as well as through Union training and professional development. Conference believes that teachers in academies, including Union members, have a right equal to teachers in all other schools to be actively involved in education activities and campaigns. However, Conference believes that a key demand of our members and other staff in academies should be for full reintegration into the local authority state sector. Conference also believes that the strategic priority for the Union should be to seek to defeat the whole academy and privatisation programmes being well aware that if this succeeds our pay and conditions and the education of the pupils will inevitably be worse.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

1. continue to campaign for a comprehensive education system based on principles of equality and local democratic accountability;

2. campaign against the establishment of academies and trusts and the involvement of the private sector in the running of schools using all forms of action up to and including industrial action;

3. work with other teacher unions, the TUC, Anti academies Alliance, parents, PTAs, governors and educationalists to organise a national campaign for the abolition of academies;

4. provide guidance, support and campaigning materials to help divisions gain commitments from local authorities in line with Union policies on academies, trusts, federations and competitions;

5. provide appropriate support to members working in academies and trust schools to ensure their active involvement in the Union, including recruitment materials to increase Union membership; and

6. actively seek the full involvement of members in all schools including academies in local authority-wide activities and campaigns.

DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION

Conference notes the democratic deficit within education provision caused by successive Government legislation in the last twenty years. This had the effect of distancing decision making from both local communities and employees and rendered meaningful accountability a thing of the past in many areas. This drive to minimise democracy has:

1. removed most powers from Local Authorities (LAs);

2. minimised local democracy by the removal of local Education Committees and the centralisation of decision making into the hands of small groups of councillors in local council Cabinets or elected Mayors;

3. increased the centralisation of control over education funding, management and curriculum, by, for example, Academy Funding Agreements;

4. exaggerated the value of competitive student admissions policies through its slogan of ‘Choice and Diversity’ and promoted an aggressively market-oriented sense of parental rights;

5. increased locally-unaccountable private control at school, LA and national level, via, for example, the Building Schools for the Future programme;

6. sponsored a disproportionately well-funded army of private consultants, advisers and school improvement partners acting as ideological enforcers and “change managers”;

7. increased the marginalisation of unions, especially in academies;

8. limited the role of democratically elected governing bodies, for example through the introduction of unelected Interim Executive Bodies in schools in special measures.

Conference further notes that, together with the sheer volume of work, increased staff mental health problems, high drop-out rates and growing management vacancies are at root caused by the authoritarian erosion of our professional autonomy in favour of subservience to externally set and monitored learning targets, methods and objectives.

Conference believes that educational provision needs more democracy, not less. So the Union must campaign for:

i. a genuinely democratic comprehensive school system where teachers, support staff, parents, school students and trade unions, together with locally elected local authorities, are all able to play a major role in developing good local schools for all students;

ii. transparent processes of decision-making at local authority level so that there are real, functioning opportunities for local communities, staff, parents and other stakeholders to have a direct influence on local policy formation and the determination of educational priorities, for example, through the establishment of elected local School Boards;

iii. a curriculum based on a social justice model, in which both the aims and objectives of learning are generated by school communities themselves, rather than a business model determined by the CBI.

Therefore, Conference instructs the Executive to campaign for:

a) all schools to belong to a genuinely accountable, reinvigorated local authority, which operates functioning democratic procedures for engaging with staff, parents, governors and communities for the purpose of determining local education priorities;

b) all school staff to be employed by LAs;

c) LAs to have powers to set common admissions procedures for all schools;

d) all schools to be obliged to publish their accounts;
e) challenge the often unacceptable practice of Student Voice in its consumerist model, to one of full participation by learners in the processes of teaching and learning;
f) the abolition of OFSTED and Estyn and a prohibition on League Tables;

g) mandatory, quinquennial, sabbatical leave of at least four months for staff to receive or provide enhanced professional development;

h) increased representation for students and providers in school governance;
i) paid time-off from work for all governors to train in the skills required to represent the school community well.

ERADICATING POVERTY

Conference welcomes the Government’s stated agenda to eradicate child poverty by 2020 and halve it by 2010. Conference notes that, currently, the Government is unlikely to deliver this agenda [the target to quarter child poverty by 2004 was not met] and condemns this government for not keeping its promise and, at the same time, allowing, during its tenure of office, the gap between the rich and poor to widen in favour of the rich and to the detriment of the living standards of the poor.

Conference also welcomes the Union’s continued support for the campaign
‘Send My Friend To School’ calling for all children throughout the world to have access to primary education by 2015 and congratulates all Union members who have recognised the importance of this campaign. Conference instructs the Executive to encourage more members to participate in this important campaign.

Conference congratulates the Union, and its members, for supporting and participating in the 4 October 2008 demonstration and rally, organised by the ENDCHILDPOVERTY campaign, to demand the Government keeps its promise to eradicate child poverty and calls on the Executive to work through the TUC to make this an annual event. Further, Conference congratulates those divisions that supported and participated in the demonstration and lobby of MPs on 22nd October 2008 calling for an end to pensioner poverty and celebrating the centenary of the National Pensions Convention.

Conference recognises that poverty in general, and child poverty in particular, is the biggest inhibiter to raising education standards in our schools and, thus, preventing children from reaching their full potential in preparation for adult life. Child poverty has a dramatic effect on the inequality of educational achievement. Examples of which are listed below (figures from the 2007 results).

a. Of the 30,000 or so students who gained 3 As at ‘A’ level only 176 were students on free school meals.

b. Only 22% of students on free school meals achieved 5 ‘A-C’s at GCSE whereas over 50% of students in the general population gained 5 ‘A-C’s at GCSE.

c. The proportion of students gaining ‘A’ grade at ‘A’ level at independent (fee paying) schools was increasing faster than the proportion gaining ‘A’ grades in the state sector.

The involvement of the private sector in public sector education has demonstrated it cannot be an alternative to eradicating poverty and that its sole interest is profiteering and not raising education standards. Conference calls upon the Government to end this agenda in the interests of the children of our country.

Conference notes that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown since the 1990s have made child poverty a major theme in their speeches. The rhetoric has been “Education, Education, Education” and “opening educational opportunity for all” particularly embodied in Gordon Brown’s speeches on the importance of social mobility. Actually Britain is becoming a more rigidly class society in which social mobility has declined and educational inequality has increased. The cumulative effect of growing income and social inequality is in turn reducing social mobility. A major promise of the incoming Labour Government was that educational inequality would be reduced by cutting class sizes; this was carried out only for infant classes but classes in junior and secondary schools have stayed the same or even increased. Despite empty rhetoric from Gordon Brown the inequality in class sizes between state schools and private has remained the same or even increased. As the resolution passed at the 2007 Conference states “the gap in class size between private and state schools is higher in the UK than anywhere else in the developed world.” Other countries have been more successful in approaching child poverty and educational inequality. In Finland educational inequality is far smaller than in Britain and according to the Daily Mail 9.8.08. “The researchers noted that the school system in Finland ensures that the highest calibre teachers work with students from the poorest homes.” In Britain many private schools offer higher salaries than the state sector.

Conference condemns those private companies that have increased their prices at the same time as maximising their profits resulting in the poor having their standard of living reduced, whilst the standard of living of the rich is unaffected, adding to poverty experienced by the working people and their children.

Conference calls on the Executive to campaign through the TUC to organise a national campaign, to take place before the next General Election, calling upon the Government to put in place a clear programme of redistribution of the wealth in our country, closing the gap between the rich and poor, to eradicate poverty with particular regard to keeping the promise of ending child poverty by 2020, ending pensioner poverty quickly and ensuring every child throughout the world has access to primary education by 2015.

Conference considers a major way the Union can limit the effect of child poverty on educational inequality is to argue in the political domain for smaller classes, especially around the next general election and take industrial action to force the implementation of smaller classes in all sectors of school education.

Conference reaffirms policy passed at the 2008 Conference to seek a commitment from the Government to implement a phased reduction of maximum class size from 30 in 2010 to 20 in 2020.

Conference, therefore, instructs the Executive to:

1. plan a large-scale billboard and press campaign for a reduction of child poverty, by a clear programme of redistribution of wealth, and to support reduced class sizes arguing this is a pre-condition of achieving equal education opportunity for all. The campaign to start in September 2009 and continue to the date of the next general election;

2. cooperate with parent groups, governors and other members of the community who are running campaigns against child poverty and for smaller classes and equal funding between the state and private sectors in school education;

3. launch a campaigning website with campaigning resources on the issues of child poverty and smaller class sizes;

4. write to other teachers’ unions and other sections of the trade union movement inviting them to be part of a campaign against child poverty and for smaller classes;

5. encourage schools to take class size action in line with existing Union policy.

EDUCATION: PRIMARY/EARLY YEARS SECTION

PRIMARY WORKFORCE CLASSROOM PROTOCOL

Conference re-affirms the Union’s policy that all classes should be taught by a qualified teacher.

Conference re-affirms the Union’s decision not to sign the Workforce Agreement. There are elements of the Workforce Agreement that have been beneficial to most but not all teachers such as the removal of the 21 tasks, the introduction of PPA time and the work of additional classroom support staff.

The Union welcomed the Unison accord which stated: Teachers teach, support staff support.

However, to maximise the benefits of having support staff working with teachers, there needs to be a clarification of the differing roles of teachers and support staff.

To achieve this, Conference calls on the Executive to work with other TUC affiliated unions:

1. to draw up a Primary Workforce Classroom Protocol based on the principle that a qualified teacher is present in the classroom and that the management of the classroom is under the direction of the teacher;

2. to seek to ensure that this Protocol forms part of Initial Teacher Training, the training of support staff and relevant Continuing Professional Development.

EARLY YEARS EDUCATION

Conference believes that high quality early years’ education is essential to the future development and life chances of children. Conference is seriously concerned, however, that the removal of the Foundation Stage from the National Curriculum, as a result of the introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage, will result in less importance being attached to education in the early years compared to the primary and secondary phases.

Conference reaffirms its belief that qualified early years teachers are vital to the provision of high quality early years education and that they create the best possible conditions for children’s learning and personal and social development.

Conference believes that high quality early education should not be limited to a narrow focus on academic standards and targets but should be concerned with the education, in the broadest sense, of the whole child and, in particular, with active participation, experiential learning and play.

Conference is very concerned by the demands made on members to complete paper-based assessments in early years, including assessment grids including up to 300 tick boxes per child.

Conference acknowledges that there is a wide variety of theories surrounding assessment practice in early years, including the idea that only what cannot be remembered should be written down.

Conference believes that the foundation of good assessment practice is the professional judgement of early years staff, and these judgements should be trusted and valued.

Conference believes it is crucial to dispel the myth that paper-based assessments are the best way to keep evidence on development in early years, and resolves to develop guidance on good assessment practice, in consultation with early years teachers.

Conference condemns, however, the potential detrimental impact on early years teachers’ workload and conditions of service as a result of the extension of the free early learning and development entitlement from 12.5 to 15 hours a week from 2010. We welcome the additional free hours and hope this will be increased so that all children receive free full-time childcare. However we are concerned that members working conditions will be affected by these changes. We also condemn the loss in some local authorities of free full-time places in school nurseries where the time is reduced to 15 hours, with additional workload implications for members.

Conference recognises that nursery schools and classes that are based on the model of delivering one session of 2.5 hours education to children in the morning session and another similar session in the afternoon are already coming under pressure to have their existing teachers and other staff deliver two three hour sessions in those authorities where the new arrangements are to be introduced in September 2009. Conference will not accept that such staff should have their workload increased by 20%.

Conference believes that this will be exacerbated by the Westminster Government’s determination to drive up the private sector provision of early years services, particularly in private nurseries.

Conference believes that all children should have equality of access to high quality early years education. Conference believes that all provision designated as “early education” should be delivered by qualified teachers, supported by teams of experienced and trained support staff. Conference believes further that the training of early years professionals (EYPs) is not comparable to that for qualified specialist teachers and that EYPs are not fully equipped to teach children aged three to five.

Conference welcomes the Union’s links with Unison and the development of links with the TUC on early years policy work.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

1. seek to establish within the TUC an early years forum whose purpose would be to advance the status of all those working in the early years children’s workforce and to resolve any difficulties relating to staffing within the early years sector;

2. safeguard the quality of early years educational provision by campaigning for the adoption by government of the principle that where early years provision is designated as “education”, it should be provided by qualified teachers;

3. publicise the Union’s policy on early education as widely as possible, seeking to make alliances with appropriate organisations wherever possible;

4. develop guidance for members on the practical implications of the extension of the free early years entitlement and encourage Regions to organise early years meeting in the summer term to discuss and draw up an action plan;

5. submit evidence to the STRB on the conditions of service implications of the extension of the free early years entitlement;

6. give full attention to the consequences of extending the free early years entitlement in terms of members’ workload and conditions of service, make clear to the Government that an extension of nursery hours will not be accepted where it is at the cost to members of an increase in workload, and, if necessary, defending members with action under Union rule;

7. approach other teacher, head teacher and support staff unions with a view to organising non-co-operation with the proposed new arrangements in the authorities where the new arrangements are being introduced in 2009 unless the workload and funding arrangements can be satisfactorily resolved before July 2009; and sanction industrial action within the Rules of the Union where Divisions request it on the basis that satisfactory arrangements have not been achieved by that time;

8. make it clear that extension of nursery hours does not mean the adoption of a childcare model, and that early years provision is education, not childcare;

9. campaign for all early years provision to be publically funded and free to parents;

10. issue clear guidance on the adult:child ratios in nurseries; 1:13 in a nursery setting where there is a qualified teacher and a member of support staff with a level 3 qualification; and

11. take a clear position on Reception class size; that 27 should be the maximum class size, and that members with class sizes above 27 should be supported by the Union if additional children above this limit are placed in their classes without staffing arrangements being altered accordingly.

EDUCATION: SECONDARY

ANTI-ACADEMIES

Conference notes:

1. the Government’s commitment to extend the academies programme and to include primary education. It is dismayed by the announcement of the ‘National Challenge’ that identified 638 schools as ‘failing’ and slating them for closure and re-opening as academies or trust schools;

2. the report by Educational International identifying the massive growth in hidden privatisation of public education both here and abroad and that academies and trust schools are a crucial part of this privatisation process;

3. that the Tory opposition are fully behind the academy programme and, if in government, would seek to extend the programme for the ‘academisation’, i.e., privatisation of the whole system;

4. that the Government’s promotion and expansion of its trust schools policy continues despite the fact that there is no evidence any school that has moved to trust status has improved performance as a result;

5. that trusts own the assets of the school, including land and buildings, which have been paid for out of public money. This transfer of assets could lead to reduced access to school facilities, or the imposition of charges, for local communities;

6. a trust’s external partner/s can form a controlling majority on the school’s governing body. This could result in aspects of a trust school’s curriculum being skewed to favour the vested interests of the external partner;

7. with concern that trust schools can opt out of the Burgundy book agreements and apply to opt out of the STPCD;

8. new staff could be employed on different terms and conditions to their colleagues, again undermining local and national agreements and undermining teamwork and solidarity;

9. that while trust schools theoretically have to act in accordance with Local Authority admissions codes this is not a legal requirement and in reality they will be able to set their own admissions policy;

10. and condemns the fact that community schools which acquire trust status can never revert back to being community schools, becoming foundation schools in the unlikely event that the trust is removed;

11. the growing resistance to academies. Local alliances of parents, teachers, and their unions and the national Anti Academies Alliance (AAA) continue to fight popular campaigns. In Barrow, Cumbria 4 Parents stood and won seats as councillors in opposition to academies. In Sheffield the council has agreed to a ballot of parents. Many campaigns around the country have taken direct action. In Bolton and Derbyshire strikes have been held against the transfer of employer to academies;

12. the continuing joint approach by all the main education unions working with both the TUC and with the Anti Academies Alliance. TUC affiliation to the AAA and the launch in July 2008 of the TUC’s model agreement on representation in academies is an important marker of the intention of the trades union movement to halt the divisive, anti-union policies of some academies and challenge the legitimacy of and act to defeat the whole programme;

13. that academies are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Conference, therefore, agrees:

(i) to seek to establish a joint task force with all education unions that will aim to conduct joint campaigns at a local level, including joint meetings, simultaneous industrial action, and leafleting of parents, at every school identified to become an academy or trust school;

(ii) to ballot members in trust schools and academies for action, up to and including strike action, where members’ pay, conditions of service, or jobs are threatened;

(iii) to organise a national conference on trust schools, which should invite all stakeholders;

(iv) to set up a working group to collect and collate evidence of abuses of nationally agreed terms and conditions and abuses of Union representatives rights in academies and trust schools;

(v) to launch a national campaign with the AAA in order to lobby the government to make a statutory provision for parental ballots over academies or trust schools;

(vi) to launch a national campaign with the AAA in order to lobby the Government to compel all academies and trust schools to recognise trade unions;

(vii) to continue to develop support for Union members in academies and trust schools, including a recruitment drive and specific, tailored advice for teachers working in academies;

(viii) to work to ensure that members in academies and trusts are included in national pay ballots and that existing facility time agreements for trade union representatives are honoured;

(ix) in the event of parental ballots being set up, to urge local associations to launch vigorous campaigns urging parents to vote against academies and trust schools and offer national support;

(x) to campaign for all existing academies and trust schools to be brought back under Local Authority control;

(xi) to ask any electoral candidates at local, regional or national level about their policy on the academies programme;

(xii) to continue to urge local associations to affiliate to, and work with, the AAA in local communities using a range of strategies & tactics and involving parents and governors as much as possible;

(xiii) to continue to support the AAA at national level.

EDUCATION: SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS SECTION

PUPIL REFERRAL UNITS AND EXCLUSION

Conference notes the:

1. Government’s report “Back on track: A strategy for modernising alternative provision for young people”(April 2008);

2. Alan Steer behavioural review document “Learning Behaviour”;

3. research document “Second Chances…exclusion from school and equality of opportunities” Donovan et al (1998);

4. research document “Minority ethnic exclusion and race relations” Parsons et al (2000);

5. research document “Outcomes in secondary education for children excluded from primary schools” Parsons et al (2001).

Conference welcomes the contribution made by the Union survey and consultative conference convened by the Executive for Union members teaching in pupil referral units on 27 June 2008 which was used to inform the Union’s policy response to the Government’s ‘Back on Track’ White paper.

Conference believes that despite the failure of the Government and their appointed review team to identify the issues central to pupil behaviour, and the particular problems faced by referral units, there is much research which casts a clear light upon the source of these problems: namely government policies.

Conference, drawing on research evidence recognises that:

(i) the level of exclusions in schools in England and Wales rose dramatically from 1,500 to 13,500 at the time of the introduction of government-inspired market competition and has remained at this astronomical level ever since;

(ii) levels of exclusion are far higher among certain groups; for example, Afro-Caribbean students are three times more likely to be excluded;

(iii) the cost of educating children excluded from school are 9.5 times the cost of supporting them in mainstream schools, haemorrhaging funds on a massive scale from those schools;

(iv) 57% of children are denied access to a new school for longer than a term and 25% for more than two terms.

Conference asserts that the role of the PRU is not to provide a long term alternative education, but to assist the socialisation of excluded young people, to re-build self esteem and facilitate their re-integration into mainstream schooling. In most cases this is possible within half a term and very rarely requires longer than one term. The professionalism of the PRU teachers should be recognised when a judgement is made that a child is ready to re-integrate so that they do not become permanent referrals and thereby block other referrals. The record of recently privatised PRUs, and similar units, does not bode well for the conditions of service for our members or the quality of service to students.

Conference condemns the focus by the Government on stepping up the powers to direct the closure of PRUs rather than celebrating the colossal commitment and endeavour of teachers in PRUs.

Conference recognises that the challenges of high teacher turnover, leadership discontinuity and inadequate Authority support will not be successfully tackled by closure or by replacement by privatised provision, and indeed private provision will inevitably set up barriers to resolving these problems.

Conference believes replacement by private providers will undermine pupil managed moves, integration plans, co-ordinated professional development for PRU staff, the outreach and behaviour support advice capacity of PRUs and jointly planned provision for excluded pupils.

Conference believes that the key issue facing PRU provision is not their quality but their lack of an integrated and co-ordinated relationship with mainstream schools.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

a. defend pupil referral units vigorously from the threat of privatisation; balloting for industrial action across the sector if any PRU is so threatened;

b. hold a conference at the end of summer 2009 on “Halting mass exclusions: The role of PRUs in mainstream education”;

c. campaign during the passage of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill to ensure that there is no automatic presumption of closure for PRUs without securing alternative arrangements which safeguard the educational needs of the young people in the PRU;

d. highlight the expert contribution of teachers in PRUs to the engagement and education of disaffected, marginalised and vulnerable groups of young people.

EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS AND RIGHTS SECTION

NO COVER AND A QUALIFIED TEACHER IN EVERY CLASSROOM

Conference reaffirms its belief that 'every class deserves a teacher', and condemns the acceptance by government and other trade unions that it is acceptable for non teacher qualified staff to teach classes, and in particular for absent teachers to be replaced by cover supervisors or Higher Level Teaching Assistants.

Conference notes that statutory provisions do not allow cover supervisors to carry out ‘specified work’ which is the work of teachers, and allow HLTAs to do this only in order to assist and under the direction and supervision of a teacher.

Conference further believes that this has harmed the quality of education offered to our students.

Conference welcomes the Government's commitment that teachers should rarely cover from 1 September 2009. However, Conference notes the failure of the so-called 'social partnership' between government and some trade unions to deliver a reduction in teacher workload, and notes that teachers' workload continues to rise. Conference further notes that this is the consequence of relentless pressure to meet externally imposed targets, excessive testing and large class sizes, and reaffirm our willingness to take national and local action, up to and including strike action, to improve our circumstances, and those of our students.

Conference further notes that:

1. the privatisation of the supply teacher system has significantly raised the cost of employing supply teachers, and notes that supply teachers, many of whom are our members, are suffering a significant loss of livelihood as a result;

2. since the Government allowed the employment of Cover Supervisors from September 2003, to ‘cover’ classes, and of HLTAs to do ‘specified work’ to assist a teacher and under the direction of a teacher, their employment has increased very significantly and that they are widely employed in every area of England and Wales. In many cases they are employed on a casual basis and on low wages, with little or no career progression;

3. the Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group's (WAMG) guidance relating to the employment of Cover Supervisors lays down very few requirements and only makes suggestions about best practice, which are at the discretion of the head teacher. Furthermore the WAMG guidance on the deployment of HLTAs published in October 2008 acknowledges concerns about the inappropriate use of unqualified staff to deliver classes;

3. Conference also notes that HLTAs are being deployed in the place of a qualified teacher despite the statutory provisions restricting HLTAs to carrying out ‘specified work’ only in order to assist or support the work of a teacher and subject to and under the direction and supervision of a teacher.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

a. campaign among teachers, relevant student groups and parents for every class to be taught by a properly qualified teacher;

b. campaign for the establishment of supply pools of properly qualified supply teachers who are able to teach and develop relationships with students, are employed on national teachers pay and conditions and have access to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and to promote this with head teachers and head teacher organisations;

c. support divisions and associations in ensuring that from 1 September 2009 the new requirement that teachers cover only rarely is enforced, and inform members of their right to take action up to and including strike action to achieve this where necessary;

d. assist divisions and associations in ensuring that in primary schools, the new cover arrangements are also applied to the system of 'split classes';

e. support divisions and associations in ensuring that teaching assistants are supporting the students they are assigned to, and that they are not pushed, against their will, into covering lessons, with a subsequent deterioration in the quality of education in the school.

Where it has not been possible to ensure our position that absent teachers should always be covered by supply teachers, Conference resolves to work with the other education unions both locally and nationally, in particular UNISON and the GMB who represent many Cover Supervisors, to ensure that:

(i) where cover supervisors or HLTAs are used they receive proper conditions of employment, pay and career prospects and training appropriate to their role;

(ii) cover supervisors are not used to do specified work, such as PPA, and are used for no more than the first three days of absence in secondary schools and no more than the first day of absence in primary schools; and

(iii) where HLTAs are used they carry out ‘specified work’ only to assist and under the supervision of a teacher.

TEACHERS’ RIGHTS

Conference recognises that a central responsibility of the Union is to secure equal protection of the rights of teachers in all types of school and service.

Conference notes the increasing impact of new types of school employer, such as academies, trusts and federations. It recognises that initiatives such as Building Schools for the Future (BSF) and the National Challenge are having the effect, as intended, of driving increasing numbers of schools into the new categories.

Conference notes that this takes place in a context where free national collective bargaining over teachers’ pay, duties and working time has not existed for 20 years, and where national bargaining over teachers’ conditions with local authority representatives is also at best dormant.

Conference recognises the deterioration in pay and the persistence of completely unacceptable levels of workload that this undermining of any proper framework for negotiated pay and conditions has led to.

Conference recognises the excellent work done by local Union Officers in securing agreements that protect and improve teachers’ conditions in individual local authorities, but also recognises that more and more schools are not covered directly by such arrangements, and that further reductions in the role of local authorities could threaten the impact and even the existence of such bargaining arrangements.

Conference welcomes work done by the National Union to protect collective bargaining in these new circumstances, such as the TUC model recognition agreement for academies and the bargaining arrangements secured in some academies and chains of academies.

Conference is fully aware, however, that all three major political parties in England talk up the idea of ever-increasing “independence” for schools, and that part of what is implied by this independence is a free-for-all in the treatment of teachers and other employees.

Conference believes that a system of nationally bargained pay and conditions for all teachers and other school staff employed in state-funded schools is important, not only for their own security and well-being, but also for stability and equity in the state education system

Conference believes, therefore, that the time has come to return to the concept of a collectively bargained National Contract for teachers, as an organising and campaigning focus for the Union – a contract to be fought for as a right of all teachers.

Conference instructs the Executive to develop, through consultation with members and local representatives, a model for such a contract, and a strategy for achieving it.

It believes that elements within the contract should include:

1. all teachers to be employed on permanent contracts except where they are covering for the absence of permanent postholders or where a school or service is being reorganised and the Union is formally involved in the process; fixed-term contracts not to be used as a form of probation; formal redeployment and retraining arrangements to be in place covering all schools in a Local Authority area to avoid redundancies;

2. no teacher in any type of school or post to be directed to work more than the 1265 hours and 195 days set out in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document;

3. professional autonomy for teachers on how much time to spend on preparation, marking and target setting;

4. a commitment to reduce the workload of teachers to the point where all work, including preparation and marking, can be contained within a 35 hour week;

5. no teacher to be required to take on commitments, additional to class teaching, without the payment of additional salary;

6. mandatory class size limits for all classes, including nursery and 6th form, in line with Union policy;

7. teachers not to be required to cover for the absence of colleagues except in genuine emergencies;

8. teachers to have a minimum 20 per cent support/non-contact time, 40 per cent in the case of teachers in their first year of teaching;

9. teachers to have the right to a break in any school session that exceeds 2 hours;

10. teachers not to be required to attend meetings of staff after school more than one evening per week, and such meetings shall not last longer than 60 minutes;

11. three of the five days a year when pupils are not in school but teachers can be required to work shall be available to the individual teacher to decide how to use for her/his own professional development;

12. all teachers to have access to at least two days of funded INSET per year outside the school. After 7 years of teaching, teachers shall have the right to a secondment of a term or more to pursue their professional development or achieve further qualifications;

13. the right of teachers to attend Union meetings shall have priority over the imposition of directed time activities at the end of the school day on one day a week to be arrived at by negotiation with each employer.

Conference instructs the Executive to include the following elements in the strategy for achieving such a Contract.

(i) A full consultation with members and lay officers on how the contract should be developed and how they can be involved in achieving it.

(ii) An approach to other teachers’ organisations to seek support for as much joint work as possible on pursuing these objectives at national and local level seeking to build on the examples of joint industrial action taken by NUT and NASUWT members and joint campaigning involving members of the ATL over the threat to national pay and conditions that are implied in the academies programme.

(iii) Direct approaches to the Government and other political parties, submissions to the STRB, and efforts to negotiate collective agreements at national level with national employers, including academy chains, and at local level with individual Local Authorities and other employers of teachers.

(iv) Publication to divisions, associations and schools before the end of the summer term 2010 of a plan of the negotiations, publicity and action proposed for the coming school year to seek the adoption of the contract as widely as possible and reminding members of the successful national indicative ballot conducted in 2006 and the willingness of the Union to ballot for sustained action to secure improvements in workload – which are in line with this national contract.

(v) In the interim, support for action at school or employer level within the Rules of the Union to achieve the implementation of aspects of the Contract where members and local officers request it including through a more focused, issue-centred approach, balloting members school-by-school or across groups of schools based on a refusal to carry out a particular task or set of activities causing workload outside our campaign aims, for example, refusal to hand in short term planning.

WORKLOAD, PAY AND CLASS SIZES – A COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY

Conference regrets that:

1. the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has again confirmed that Britain’s primary class sizes are larger than almost every other developed country and that the gap between private and state school class sizes remains higher than in any other OECD country;

2. there has been no indication that the Government intends to implement the phased reduction to a maximum class size of 20 by 2020, as agreed by Annual Conference 2008;

3. the Government remains committed to holding down teachers’ pay awards beneath the rate of inflation despite evidence of growing difficulties in recruiting and retaining appropriately qualified staff;

4. most teachers still work over 50 hours a week, maintaining an unacceptable workload that is an important contribution to the “significant wastage rate among recently qualified teachers” acknowledged by the Secretary of State;

5. The proportion of a teacher’s working week allocated to Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) time and leadership and management time remains too little for teachers to be able to adequately plan, assess and develop the curriculum to meet the needs of every school student.

Conference resolves that the Union will oppose any attempts to further worsen teachers’ pay and working conditions, and children’s learning conditions, through expenditure cuts that may be proposed as a result of an economic recession. Instead, Conference resolves to continue to campaign for the funding required to improve salaries and to employ the additional qualified staff needed for class sizes and teacher workload to be reduced.

Conference notes that, while school or division-based action will continue to be vital to win local disputes over pay and conditions, a campaign to achieve the improved levels of funding needed to fundamentally tackle these issues will require national action.

Conference further notes the decisions of the 2008 Annual Conference to:

(i) develop “a comprehensive strategy to protect and improve the living standards and conditions of teachers, and make educational gains for pupils and communities”;

(ii) conduct a ballot for national strike action, combined with other issues such as pay where appropriate, to demand that the Government seriously addresses the requirement to provide teachers with an acceptable work-life balance”.

Conference therefore instructs the Executive to:

a. draw up a comprehensive claim, in line with Union policy, to submit to the Government, Welsh Assembly Government, employers and the School Teachers’ Review Body, that clearly sets out the linked objectives of:

A. our salary claim,

B. a set of specific improvements to teachers’ working conditions including a national teachers, contract;

C. a phased reduction in class sizes;

b. seek support for these demands amongst other unions, parents and governors aimed at building a consensus on defending and expanding funding for public services;

c. develop a publicity and campaigning strategy that involves members in different ways to advance the union’s campaign; such a strategy to include regular briefings for division secretaries;

d. prepare members for a campaign of industrial action in support of such a claim;

e. ballot members for national strike action on some or all of the above priorities, at an appropriate time, if no satisfactory progress is made in securing our aims. The timing and precise nature of the ballot to be kept under review by the Executive.

MEMORANDUM OF THE EXECUTIVE – TEACHER MENTAL HEALTH WORKING PARTY

The Memorandum which was carried by Conference can be found on Hearth at Conferences and on the website at Conferences > annual conference.

EQUALITY CONFERENCES

FIGHTING FOR LGBT RIGHTS

Conference notes the alarming electoral progress made by the fascist British National Party (BNP) in recent elections.

Conference notes that the BNP claim to have a neutral stance on issues of sexuality but their true aim is to prevent any promotion of equality for LGBT people. The chairman, Nick Griffin, has denounced homosexuality as a “form of behavioural deviancy” and “not a valid lifestyle choice”. He also stated that it “needs to be pushed humanely but firmly back into the closet”. He warned that if gays continue to “press their aims further” there will be an “almighty black-lash” which will result in the imprisonment of all homosexuals. A chilling reminder of the Nazi persecution resulting in the murder of thousands of LGBT people. (‘Putting the Record Straight’, Nick Griffin, ‘Identity’ [BNP magazine], December 2003).

Conference notes that the Union has a long and proud tradition of promoting issues of equality and supporting LGBT members and believes that this work should be further strengthened with a view to combating the poisonous ideas and propaganda of the BNP.

Conference believes that combating discrimination against LGBT teachers will help create a climate in schools where all teachers irrespective of sexual orientation are confident to challenge discrimination and work in an environment where every child and teacher can feel safe to teach and learn.

Conference notes the continuing discrimination faced by our members, colleagues and pupils on the grounds of their actual and/or perceived sexuality. It further notes the prevalence of homophobia found in surveys conducted by associations in the North West Region. These have, and are, uncovering the staggering levels of explicit abuse faced by our members and the pupils we teach. It commends the practical partnership strategies (‘Challenging Homophobia in our Schools’ project) being developed between associations, local authorities, LGBT Youth and FFLAG organisations to commence at school/classroom level to address homophobia in schools.

Conference believes that:

i. now is the optimum time to exploit our unique position within education to practically combat homophobia in our schools;

ii. the active and professional engagement of our members in such equality projects is central to the success of work to arrest homophobic abuse and discrimination ‘endemic’ in our schools;

iii. challenging homophobia in our schools is about human equality, addressing bigotry and ignorance, encouraging respect and understanding human diversity rather than the private lives and behaviour of individuals.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

1. campaign nationally and locally against all forms of discrimination faced by these groups. Ensure that the employers are made aware of their legal responsibilities and seek to promote LGBT equality when negotiating at a national or local level aiming to ensure that:

a. fair recruitment and promotion procedures are followed and that applications from LGBT applicants are welcome. Equal opportunities training should be promoted at school and Local Authority level;

b. the work of School Improvement Partners should not be limited to intervention when schools fail ‘targets’ related to pupil levels and should support, guide and strengthen work which removes the barriers of discrimination against staff and pupils;

c. harassment and bullying policies make specific reference to inappropriate language and behaviour which LGBT teachers find offensive;

d. school behaviour policies support LGBT staff and pupils and ensure that discriminatory behaviour when encountered is taken seriously and dealt with. The unwanted behaviour should be recorded and shared with the employer with a view to monitoring and reducing further instances in the future;

e. websites containing advice and support for LGBT staff, pupils are not blocked;

f. monitoring, tracking and evaluating of policies will take place each year to test the effectiveness of adopted policies;

g. schools are encouraged to review their curriculum and publicity material to create a more positive image of LGBT lifestyles and promote Lesbian Gay History Month;

h. an environment is created where staff feel able to disclose their sexual orientation without fear of discrimination and harassment;

i. the excellent work of ‘Schools Out’ is supported and promoted by affiliating to the organisation locally and nationally;

j. there is dissemination of practical strategies for tackling homophobia in our schools that recognise the centrality of our members to the success of such endeavours;

k. the Union engages in a practical way with organisations committed to the aims of furthering the equality agenda and especially those groups which recognise the centrality of the teaching profession to the effective delivery of such strategies;

l. academy sponsors are not permitted to use their position to discriminate against LGBT staff or pupils.

2. To ensure that specific training to assist in helping officers and representatives of the Union in securing the above is made available as part of training for representatives when promoting policies, schools management and developing and supporting teachers in other sectors.

3. To raise the profile of equality conferences in publications and newsletters and encourage members to attend.

4. To support and promote LGBT Pride events at local and national levels and to seek the advice and support of the LGBT Working Party within one month after Conference with a view to how this could be further strengthened.

5. To organise a strong contingent at the UK Pride 2009 event and ensure that the event is large and prominent by hiring a float with sufficient materials promoting the Union’s policies regarding LGBT equality in education and demolishing the misleading and bigoted views which LGBT members may face.

6. To make an impact in forthcoming Pride events raising the profile of the Union and encouraging as many members and officers of the Union to attend where possible.

7. To continue to support and sponsor the work of Unite Against Facism and Love Music, Hate Racism.

8. To link up with campaigns against the BNP and encourage members, using the Political Fund to campaign against this fascist group that is not only a threat to LGBT members, but to the Union in its entirety.

9. To sponsor a Fringe meeting at Annual Conference 2010 on ‘Challenging Homophobia’ in order to raise awareness amongst delegates.

BLACK MEMBERS’ STRUCTURE

Conference congratulates the Executive for bringing an Equality Section to the agenda for Annual Conference, pioneered in 2008.

Conference further congratulates the Executive and delegates to Conference 2008 on the undoubted success of the Equalities section.

Conference notes that the success of the Black Teachers’ Conference and the LGBT Conference goes from strength to strength and welcomes the more recently established Disabled Members’ Conference.

Conference recognises and values the work of the Union’s Equality Audit Working Group and Education, Equalities and Professional Development Department in moving the Equality agenda forward.

Conference, however, notes with disappointment that apart from the Black Teachers’ Conference, the Union does not have any formal structures for Black members, some 19 years after Conference overwhelmingly passed the Black Members’ Memorandum.

Conference believes this to be remiss of the Union and therefore instructs the Executive to:

1. establish and develop a self-organising Black Members’ Section, at both a regional and national level, to be embedded within the formal structures of the Union, operating within our Aims and Objects;

2. establish and operate a Black Members’ network;

3. seek the views of the Union’s other equality conferences and equality advisory committees/working parties to ascertain the appropriateness of a similar structure operating within other equality sections of the Union;

4. charge the Equality Audit Working Group with the responsibility of producing clear guidelines on what constitutes discrimination (racial, sexual, disability or religion);

5. bring a proposal to the Executive for putting points 1 and 2 above into operation;

6. bring a report on the above to Conference 2010.

EQUALITY SECTION

ANTI-RACISM

Conference is aware that during economic crises far right elements in society often become more vociferous and attempt to manipulate the conditions in society for their own racist and fascist political gain. Conference notes that the world economic crisis may lead to an increase in support for far right extremism and racism, and an increase in public hostility to migrants as the job market tightens. Conference notes the valuable contribution that migrant workers make to a wide variety of areas of employment and the economy particularly the spheres of horticulture, agriculture, public transport and the health service. Conference also recognises the immense contribution overseas trained teachers make to the education service. Conference regrets the use of the slogan, ‘British jobs for British workers’ by Gordon Brown in his 2007 Labour conference speech, which has led to widespread misconceptions and the exploitation of this phrase by the BNP.

Conference notes:

1. with concern that the economic situation has led to a growth in hostility to refugees and asylum seekers, and to the use of foreign labour, in the media and from official and government sources;

2. that justified anger and concern over the impact of the economic crisis, and the continuing drive by employers to attack union organisation and attack pay and conditions, has been exploited by some organisations, including the British National Party, in order to place the blame for job loss and unemployment on foreign workers, rather than on the greed and incompetence of those who have driven the economic system into crisis. This has been exacerbated by the Prime Ministers’ call for ‘British jobs for British workers’;

3. the continuing support for the British National Party in some areas of the country, as shown in the election of numbers of councillors in areas such as Barking and Dagenham and Stoke on Trent, as well as the election of a BNP member to the London Assembly;

4. a BNP councillor being appointed as Chair of Children and Young Person’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee;

5. the possibility of the BNP making larger scale gains in the local and European elections;

6. that it is 30 years since the death of London teacher Blair Peach, killed by the police while demonstrating against the National Front in Southall.

Conference further notes:

(i) the tragic consequences of knife and gun crime for the young people we teach and their communities;

(ii) the negative consequences of the stereotyping of young black people in connection with knife and gun crime;

(iii) the rise in the stopping and searching of young working class people, black and white, which is creating anger and resentment, rather than effectively preventing knife and gun crime.

Conference reaffirms its belief that refugees and asylum seekers have made, and continue to make, a huge contribution to our society, and are not to blame for the problems created by issues such as inadequate housing, job loss and the impact of the recession

Conference further affirms that all workers, whatever their background or nationality, are welcome here, and expresses its concern that the scapegoating of ‘foreign’ labour will encourage the growth of the far right, and the growth of racist sentiment. Conference congratulates those workers and shop stewards who have fought to work with and unionise ‘foreign’ workers, and have resisted attempts at scapegoating.

Conference reaffirms its commitment to work with Unite Against Fascism, Love Music Hate Racism, and Searchlight and to campaign locally and nationally against racism and fascism. Conference calls on the Executive to encourage local associations to actively participate in local campaigns against racism and fascism.

Conference further agrees to make use of the Union’s Political Fund to produce material opposing the BNP and other racist and fascist organisations, and instructs the Executive to publicise this initiative among members, and to encourage members to campaign actively against far-right candidates in the forthcoming elections.

Conference congratulates the Union on its support for initiatives such as the setting up of London Schools Against Racism and Fascism, and the organisation of a Love Music Hate Racism event, and instructs the Executive to encourage all areas of the Union to develop such initiatives. Conference further instructs the Executive to produce guidance for members in schools where members of organisations such as the BNP are members of the governing body.

Conference agrees to support and publicise initiatives to commemorate Blair Peach.

Conference welcomes the setting up of a website to encourage the sharing and dissemination of anti-racist teaching material, and the organisation of courses at Stoke Rochford to encourage members to take an active role in schools in developing anti-racist teaching initiatives.

Conference calls upon the Government and police to take steps to combat the stereotyping of our young people, and to reverse the rise in "Stop and Search".

Conference further calls upon the Union to campaign for better facilities for young people out of school hours.

Conference therefore calls on the Executive to press the TUC and its affiliated unions to join forces in fighting for an alternative economic model which protects working people and in collectively organising against the threat of the BNP and other far right groups and to:

a. coordinate affiliated unions’ activities against far right groups;

b. provide up to date advice to unions on campaigning strategies; and

c. organise a briefing for unions on the impact of the economic downturn on race relations.

Conference agrees to:

A. publicise campaigning work against the BNP in the June European elections, and encourage members to take an active part;

B. continue to support asylum seekers and refugees in our schools;

C. work with the TUC, other unions and organisations to counter the effects of the economic crisis, including supporting campaigns for equal pay and conditions for all workers whatever their background, and encouraging the growth of trade union organisation in all workplaces;

D. campaign against cuts in educational provision, and in the youth service.

INTERNATIONAL SECTION

STOP THE SPREAD OF WAR

Conference condemns the Israeli attacks on the people of Gaza in January 2009, which killed over one thousand people, including three hundred children.

Conference notes that the people of Gaza have lived for the past two years under an Israeli blockade that has prevented them from receiving vital food, electricity and medical supplies. Under the recent invasion, Save the Children, reported a “severe shortage of food” and the UN warned of a humanitarian crisis. Conference, therefore, condemns the decision of both Sky and the BBC not to broadcast the DEC aid appeal for Gaza.

Conference further notes that many of the weapons used in the attacks on Gaza have been sold to the Israeli government from the UK; over £18.8 million worth of British arms were sold to Israel in 2008 alone.

Conference notes with concern that during 2008 and already in 2009 military conflicts, in addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have led to thousands of civilian deaths including large numbers of children. In countries across Africa and the Middle East the civilian population does not enjoy the peace with security to which everyone should have a right.

Conference endorses the view of Education International that the targeting of educational infrastructure, whether in Gaza or elsewhere, can never be acceptable. Conference asserts that schools and colleges should be safe havens for civilians and in particular for children during military conflicts.

Conference is also concerned at the wholly unjustifiable continuation of an economic blockade against Cuba, and the vilification and economic destabilization of other Central and South American states where the people have elected governments that are challenging neo-liberalism.

Conference is therefore concerned that, in a period of global economic recession, the competitive drive at the heart of capitalism could spill over into more rather than fewer military conflicts including civil wars like those inside Darfur, Somalia, Zimbabwe and Kenya during 2008, with grave consequences for the teachers, children and communities of many parts of the world.

Conference endorses the motion passed by the Executive on the crisis in Gaza, on 22 January 2009. Conference urges associations and divisions to hold collections for MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians) and the Tom Hurndall Education Fund, as agreed by the Executive.

Conference therefore instructs the Executive to:

1. work closely with partners such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Stop the War Coalition on questions of educational materials, military recruitment, peace protests and campaigns aimed at getting UK troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and ending the Israeli denial of Palestinian rights;

2. call on the British Government to end the arms trade between Britain and Israel and to call for an end to the EU-Israel Agreement until the occupation is ended;

3. call on the British government to ban all imports from illegal Israeli settlements and encourage our members to boycott goods, especially agricultural produce, produced in the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories;

4. condemn the 13th January 2009 statement by the Histadrut defending the Israeli bombardment of Gaza;

5. continue and increase the Union’s work through Education International and other alliances to co-ordinate international trade union opposition to military invasions;

6. take every opportunity to oppose the UK Government’s involvement in invasions like Iraq and Afghanistan and within the TUC to promote the Union’s opposition to invasions, wars and military conflict to promote imperialist self-interests and the need for UK foreign policy to break with that of Washington;

7. give high priority to providing solidarity and practical assistance to trade union and workers organisations in all areas of world conflict, including support through Education International on the basis of these policies.

ORGANISING AND MEMBERSHIP SECTION

CASEWORK FOR MEMBERS

Conference notes the anecdotal evidence that the amount of casework done by Union officers is increasing and also that the nature of the casework has changed with more complex aspects, and that many lay officers are reporting increasing and sometimes unreasonable demands on their time from casework. Conference wishes to record its thanks to local officers and school representatives who provide support to members.

Conference welcomes the present emphasis on an ‘organising union’ strategy. Although many members join so that they can get casework help if needed, the other aspects of the Union’s work are also fundamental, and successful campaigning work can head off future casework problems. Conference recognises the need to encourage more members to become active in the Union both at local and school level and welcomes developments such as young teacher initiatives, the fairer future project and campaigns to recruit and improve support for school representatives which seek to achieve this goal. However, Conference is worried that demand-led casework may be increasingly dominating the work of many lay officers.

Conference welcomes the additional office based casework support officers in the regional/Wales offices, but notes the decision not to increasing staffing at regional officer level (following the request made by the 2007 Conference) until further work is undertaken assessing the situation.

Conference calls on the Executive, via the Working Party on Support for Local Associations and Divisions if appropriate, to carry out a survey to gauge the size and nature of the casework problem, to see what effect it is having on local officers’ work, to see if the growth in more serious casework requires a further review of staffing in the regional and Wales offices, and to see how more help and training can be given to associations and lay officers in coping with increased association casework and the new difficulties associated with casework. When carrying this out, the following should also be considered.

1. The development of a members’ only section of the web site where members are directed to seek self help support and where answers to frequently asked questions can be obtained.

2. Ways of turning individual casework into collective Union work e.g. over bullying and harassment.

4. Priority support from the Regional and Wales offices to enable lay officers to obtain advice and guidance.

4. The nature and type of support needed by lay safety officers.

5. A new follow-up course after the new secretaries course (a year or two later) when secretaries have more knowledge about what questions they should be asking and what their needs are.

6. An expansion of regional and Wales training to ensure that both association and division officers are provided with the support they need.

7. The possible differing needs across the country depending on what the geographical type of area is, the amount of facility time granted, and other local factors.

8. An electronic co-ordinated casework database, so that caseworkers can find out more easily what help is/has already been given to a member.

Conference then instructs the Executive to take whatever action is needed resulting from the lessons of the survey as a matter of urgency and even before the survey is completed to give full support to divisions seeking to increase the amount of facility time available to them.

ORGANISING AND RECRUITMENT

Conference reaffirms its belief that progress towards professional unity and greater influence and strength for the Union is best achieved by aiming for membership growth and building on the organising agenda.

Conference recognises that school representatives have played, and continue to play, a crucial role in recruiting and retaining members and that this has helped maintain the Union’s position as the largest teachers’ union in Europe.

Conference notes that school representatives are the backbone of the Union and their hard work and commitment in the vital day to day role of supporting members in workplaces on a whole host of issues is why so many teachers join the Union in the first place.

Conference further notes with grave concern that, despite legal protection and entitlements, our representatives still, on occasion, face bullying, victimisation and harassment in schools for simply carrying out union activities. Conference finds it unacceptable that some of our potential representatives are dissuaded from taking on the role for fear of being singled out and victimised, including being overlooked for promotion.

Conference is aware that this is increasingly becoming the case in many Academy and Trust schools as governing bodies in these schools are not necessarily bound by Local Authority procedures agreed with the teachers’ unions.

Conference commends the support the Union has given to our representatives who have been subjected to bullying, intimidation and victimisation, including balloting for sustained industrial action when required.

Conference notes the new activities undertaken to take forward the Union’s recruitment and retention programme and the organising agenda.

Conference notes that the direct involvement of members in recruitment and retention is at the heart of the organising agenda. Research shows face-to-face persuasion to be the most effective recruitment activity and instructs the Executive to:

1. continue to build on the recent recruitment and organising initiatives;

2. commit the Union, nationally and locally, to a major recruitment campaign, commencing in the Autumn term 2009;

3. consider the recruitment potential of each proposed new policy development or activity;

4. provide increased support to constituent associations and school representatives to assist them in their recruitment activities;

5. reinforce the focus on organising and recruitment activities in the Union’s national and local training courses for school representatives and local officers;

6. continue its robust defence of bullied, victimised and harassed representatives, including continued support for requests for ballots for sustained industrial action when representatives have suffered the above;

7. collect and collate from associations and divisions evidence of our representatives
being bullied, victimised or harassed in order to help the Union build a profile of the current national situation and develop strategies to combat these unacceptable practices;

8. approach the TUC to request a survey of workplace representation. This should include the likely obstacles to such representation and the frequency and forms of workplace representative bullying by management across the public sector;

9. work with the TUC in the creation, distribution and delivery of literature and other materials to all workplaces and educational institutions on the history, purpose and value of trade unionism;

10. establish a strategy to secure fair and proportionate non-contact time for school representatives, including those in Academy and Trust schools, as part of a nationally consistent Union Facilities Agreement to be included in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document.

SALARIES, SUPERANNUATION AND EDUCATION ECONOMICS SECTION

SALARY POLICY

Conference reaffirms its support for the Union’s longstanding claim and campaign for Fair Pay for Teachers. Conference affirms that the current economic situation does not in any way negate the case for higher pay for teachers, which is needed to ensure stable teacher supply for the future and to reward teachers properly in comparison to other graduate professions. Conference condemns the Government and the STRB for their failure to put in place proper professional levels of pay for teachers.

Conference congratulates all those members of the Union and other unions who have taken strike action over pay this year.

Conference agrees that the successful joint strike action by the Union, PCS and UCU on April 24th showed the way that public sector unions can unite to challenge Government policy.

Conference endorses the TUC General Council statement which rejected any relationship between public sector pay rises and inflation. Conference believes that the current recession will only be worsened by cutting the real value of public sector workers’ pay and believes that pay increases for public sector workers would in fact assist the economic recovery. Conference welcomes the fact that the Government has now abandoned its 2 per cent limit on public sector pay but deplores the continuing attacks on public sector workers’ pay and pensions.

Conference believes that public sector workers have the right to be protected against the effects of inflation and calls upon the Executive to continue to work within and outside the TUC for higher public sector pay and the funding needed to implement it.

Conference recognises that pensions are deferred pay and a fundamental part of the public sector pay package. Conference deplores the renewed attack on public sector pensions and instructs the Executive to give the same priority to the defence of pensions as to the defence of pay.

Conference further notes that school teachers’ salaries have been under attack consistently since 2004 through below inflation pay rises, the reduction in safeguarding, a tightening of the performance management regulations and the introduction of TLRs to replace Management Allowances with thousands of teachers losing income.

Conference condemns the growing linkage between pay progression and performance management and in particular the use of numerical targets based on pupil results. Conference instructs the Executive to continue to pursue the Union’s policy of no linkage between pay and performance measures, including support for members up to and including industrial action where appropriate.

Conference congratulates the Executive for commissioning the report of Income Data Services that shows that teachers are behind other graduates not just in starting salaries but also at the end of 5 years in the job.

Conference notes and condemns the decision of the STRB in June 2008 to refuse to ask for a remit to re-look at teachers pay. The inflation rate was over the 3.2% trigger figure that the STRB had itself agreed and its failure to carry through the process is the final confirmation that it is not in any sense independent. It is a body exclusively appointed by government and it carries through government wishes.

Conference notes the proposal to establish national collective bargaining machinery for school support staff and welcomes the Government’s renewed commitment to collective bargaining as a means of determining pay and conditions of service. This commitment is inconsistent with retaining the Government-appointed STRB structure for teachers, which has failed to provide meaningful improvements in teachers’ pay or conditions of service. Conference calls on the other teachers’ unions to recognise the significance of the proposal and support a return to national collective bargaining for teachers. Conference instructs the Executive to take all appropriate steps to build support for this.

Conference calls on the Executive to continue to work as closely as possible with other unions engaged in campaigns over pay both via the TUC and through bilateral discussions.

Conference instructs the Executive to seek:

1. an increase of £3,000 or 10% (whichever is the greater) for all salaries together with an additional increase to restore in full the pay losses resulting from below inflation increases since 2005;

2. the merging of the main and upper pay scales into a single scale with annual progression up it; and

3. the abolition of the separate Inner and Outer London and Fringe Area pay scales and the re-establishment of Inner and Outer London and Fringe Allowances of £7700, £5500 and £2200 respectively, without prejudice to the Union’s overriding policy objective of securing competitive national pay levels for all teachers.

Conference welcomes the Union’s submissions to the STRB in September and February which have forcefully put forward the Union’s pay claim and made the case for fair and improved pay for teachers.

Conference agrees that this claim and structure should form the basis of submissions to other negotiating fora, e.g., for Sixth Form Colleges.

Conference believes that the recession will only be worsened by cutting the real value of the pay of teachers and of other public sector workers. Conference therefore instructs the Executive to work with the TUC and individual unions willing to be part of a campaign to ensure proper pay awards in the public sector and the necessary funding to implement them without damaging services.

Conference instructs the Executive that if there is any suggestion that the STRB will recommend, or the Government will propose or accept, that the 2.3% pay awards for September 2009 or 2010 be reduced, it must prepare a vigorous campaign against this, including preparing the membership for a ballot for industrial action.

Conference recognises the increasing pressure to link movements on pay spines to measures of performance, and the growth in the use of targets based on pupil results. Conference instructs the Executive to pursue vigorously at national level the Union’s policy of no linkage between pay and measures of performance, which are almost inevitably spurious or damaging to the delivery of education. It instructs the Executive to support members faced with the imposition of performance related pay, and to encourage and support action in schools that attempt to set performance targets linked to pupil results or other numerical indicators.

EMERGENCY RESOLUTION: CUTS IN FUNDING FOR POST-16 EDUCATION

Conference:

1. condemns the mismanagement of post-16 education and training places by the Government and the LSC;

2. condemns the cuts in capital and revenue funding to FE and 6th form colleges and sixth forms and post-16 provision in special schools, which are likely to lead to a rationing and/or a reduction in quality of educational opportunities for young people;

3. expresses its concern at the worsening of the economic situation and, in particular, the potential explosion in youth unemployment this summer amongst school leavers and graduates;

4. believes that, as teachers and trade unionists, we have a responsibility to stand up for the young people we teach, who have been repeatedly told that their education will fit them for a job and now find themselves abandoned. We don’t want our students to become part of another ‘lost generation’, like the school leavers of the 1980s.

NUT Conference instructs the Executive to:

i. campaign for a restoration of funding for post-16 education;

ii. approach other unions, particularly UCU and the other education unions and the National Union of Students, to discuss joint campaigning against cuts in education funding;

iii. seek to defend the jobs of teachers affected by these cuts, by collective action where possible, up to and including strike action;

iv. campaign for the biggest possible mobilisation of NUT members on the march for jobs called by Unite on 16th May in Birmingham, marching under the banner ‘Jobs for All, Education for All’;

v. initiate discussions with other unions, particularly the NUS and education unions, for a demonstration in the autumn over the issue of unemployment, highlighting youth unemployment.

STRATEGY, FINANCE AND COMMUNICATIONS SECTION

IMPACT OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

Conference notes:

1. that the credit crunch, speculation and lack of proper regulation have triggered Global recession. The impact in England and Wales has led to a crisis in the real economy and in working people’s lives, with thousands of home repossessions, significant increases in unemployment, and threats to pension schemes both current and future;

2 that the Government has provided hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to recapitalise the banks and provide lines of short term credit, but that the same resources have not been mobilised by the government to protect jobs or prevent repossessions;

3. the TUC statements on the economy, calling for a strategy to protect jobs and services and the excellent TUC Touchstone pamphlets on “The Missing Billions” and “Do the Super Rich Matter”.

Conference welcomes the work done by the Executive so far on these matters.

Conference believes that:

(i) the economic crisis is not akin to a natural disaster, but that it instead reveals huge problems with the way the economy is organised;

(ii) working people bear no responsibility for this crisis and should not have to pay the price for it; but that many of them will unless the Government changes its priorities;

(iii) the trades unions, coordinated by the TUC, are the institutions most capable of protecting working people in this time of economic crisis;

(iv) working people are right to be angry at the impact on jobs of the economic crisis, and right to fight back against those effects, including by striking;

(v) in such fights progressive demands should be raised such as that all workers in the UK, regardless of nationality, should be covered by negotiated industry wide agreements. But within such fights the slogan "British jobs for British workers" should be rejected as divisive, targeting the wrong people, letting those responsible for job cuts off the hook, and opening the door to far right and racist ideas and organisations;

(vi) the TUC backed protest on 28 March around the G20 summit under the slogans, "Decent jobs and public services for all"; "End global poverty and inequality" and "Build a green economy" is a welcome initiative which could and should be built upon for further TUC led actions in response to the economic crisis."

Conference instructs the Executive to call on the TUC and its affiliated unions to:

a. develop and promulgate a set of demands to be debated in each trades union and then decided on at Congress. That these demands, to be discussed, should include the protection of real pay levels, housing, employment, jobs and levels of public spending, together with the ending of wasteful privatisation and a call for a progressive tax system and the return of union rights;

b. encourage all affiliated trades unions to take the demands that are agreed to their members and to ballot where appropriate for co-ordinated industrial action aimed at getting the Government to adopt them.

Conference endorses, as a step towards helping to formulate this set of trade union movement demands, "The People's Charter", initiated by the RMT union. Conference also urges the TUC and all affiliated unions to debate and endorse either this, or a broadly similar set of demands emerging from such debates for. which the widest support in the trade union movement can be won.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

A. continue the pay campaign and campaigns against academies and other privatisation;

B. work to achieve the above demands through the TUC and through co-operation with other unions willing to engage in joint campaigns;

C. actively pursue in discussions with other education unions the drawing up of a specific "Education Charter" as a contribution to the trade union movement's response to the economic crisis. Such a Charter should have at its core some key principles:

(i) education should be a right not a privilege and should be free (including to university students);

(ii) education should be about the rounded development of the individual, of society as a whole, and developing social and global justice - not merely the preparation of young people for the labour market;

(iii) an end to, and reversal of, the process of handing over more and more of the education system to private institutions and the market (Trusts, Academies, PFI projects);

(iv) no cuts in education provision as a result of the economic crisis – if there is money for the banks there is money for schools and colleges;

(v) no cutting of education workers' jobs, conditions or pensions as a result of the crisis.

DEFENDING PUBLIC SERVICES

Conference notes that since 1997 the Government has pursued a policy of “public sector reform”. Conference regrets that many of these reforms have been hostile to the providers of those services, including such things as:

1. privatisation, or outsourcing of services;

2. increased top down management techniques;
3. the introduction of target setting;

4. performance-related pay and performance management;

5. the break up of locally delivered services under the banner of consumer choice.

Conference notes that many of the reforms that have affected education and teachers are common to services across the public sector, such as health, local government and the civil service.

Conference congratulates the Executive for promoting the maximum co-ordination across trade unions in the campaigns to defend our pensions and against the government’s pay freeze and believes that such work can provide a model for a campaign to promote an alternative vision for the provision of public services.

Conference further notes that in a recession it is vital to maintain levels of investment in public services.

Conference welcomes the Union’s support for Public Services Not Private Profit and other campaigns, including the Anti Academies Alliance, Keep the NHS Public, Defend Council Housing, Keep the Post Public, which seek to develop joint union campaigning in defence of public services

Conference therefore calls on the Executive to work with other TUC affiliated unions in developing a high profile campaign as a means of providing positive alternatives to the government’s reform agenda.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

(i) promote this campaign amongst members;

(ii) approach other unions with a view to producing joint materials on the campaign;

(iii) consider inviting contributions to Union publications from other unions on how the reform agenda has affected their members;

(iv) encourage local associations to work with other local unions in publicising the campaign through public meetings, street stalls and other activities;

(iv) publicise the work of Public Services Not Private Profit and other such campaigns as above, and encourage members to help develop the campaign;

(vi) continue to work closely with EI (Education International) on the defence of public services internationally.



ACTING GENERAL SECRETARY CHRISTINE BLOWER’S SPEECH
TO CONFERENCE 2009

President, Conference

I want first to congratulate you, President, on your rousing speech which had, at its heart, the core values of our great Union; a union for teachers in Wales and in England. I am delighted that you have been able to begin your presidency in Cardiff, the City in which you went to University and with which you have a long association and great that both the home teams won too. You – along with so many delegates who have made great speeches this week, have set out the programme we will follow as we leave this Conference.

I stand before you as the Acting General Secretary. I got this job under the most tragic and unexpected of circumstances. Much mention has been made of Steve in the past few days. His death has focussed attention on his life. He was at his very centre a teacher. His trade unionism and his internationalism grew from his deep commitment to equality and justice, to education as the great liberator. We may not all have expressed it in those terms but that is why many of us became teachers. It’s less fashionable today to talk about teaching as a vocation but Conference I believe it to be just that for many people. I also believe it to be the best job in the world and so did Steve. A patient and sympathetic teacher can make all the difference to a young person who comes to school less than well equipped and ready to learn. Teachers can create life chances for young people who might otherwise have lacked them. Teachers can make a real difference. It’s a great responsibility but also a great privilege. It’s tough and tiring but it can also be great fun. Many of our young teachers are all too well aware of this and some of our older ones as well. Betty Brett, for instance, current President of Waltham Forest, started teaching in 1951, the year of my birth and is still teaching to this day. It may not be a unique record but it is one of which we and she can be very proud. The truth behind the slogan of ‘every child matters’ is one that has always been a touchstone for teachers and was the key to Steve’s tireless fight for good quality education for all children.

Steve’s legacy will be seen through the union and across the educational landscape but nowhere will it be more appropriately seen than in the redoubled efforts we will all make to eradicate child poverty at home and ensure that all the world’s children have access to a good quality education wherever they live. Steve was at the forefront of the Union’s engagement with the Global Campaign for Education. Nelson Mandela, a great supporter of the Global Campaign, has said this year: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. That’s why we in the NUT are signed up to the Big Read. I trust that either on April 22 or on a day of your choice you will get all the young people in your schools involved in this year’s events to help get all the world’s children into primary education by 2015.

Globally we were making progress but that progress has now stalled. Over 30 million more children are in school than when the campaign began but still over 70 million miss out. Fairness and justice on a global scale require Education for All.

In the UK, too, we are only too well aware that child poverty persists. As the CPAG campaign ‘2 Skint 4 School’ states:

“The educational attainment gap between children from high income and low income families starts at a young age and grows.

“Educational under-performance is a cause and a consequence of poverty. Narrowing the gap is essential to improving child outcomes and, thereby, preventing future poverty.”

Or as many of us have said, we don’t use the poverty in which many of our children live as an excuse for their performance in school but it surely is a reason for why they face difficulties.

Both at a global level and here at home we must hold the Government to account. The prime minister, on behalf of the government, has made pledges to children. However, not enough has been done and the gap between the rich and those in poverty in our society has widened and as that gap widens, so does the attainment gap. Even at a time of economic uncertainty the pledges to those in poverty at home and globally must be kept. It’s a scandal that this year Save the Children is having to run programmes to feed children in the UK, such are the levels of poverty some families face. We will continue to campaign and lobby alongside the Child Poverty Action Group to win fairness for those families, starting with the £3 billion needed in this month’s budget to reach the target of halving child poverty by 2010.

At this point, Colleagues, I would like to pay tribute to Bethany and James, the winners of the Steve Sinnott award, who are working to raise awareness of the Global Campaign. Those of you who heard them speak at the International Fringe Meeting will have been powerfully struck by how articulate, committed and persuasive they are. They are indeed a testament to what being educated, in a free State comprehensive school, is all about.

On April 5th last year, as we heard of Steve’s death, we were preparing for the first national strike in two decades. I think Steve would have told us “Don’t mourn, organise”. And that we did in a magnificent way. We marched and demonstrated the length and breadth of England and Wales alongside our sisters and brothers in UCU and PCS. The marches and rallies and speeches of April 24th were in pursuit of the justified claim for Fair Pay for Teachers but became, too, a way of marking Steve’s leadership of that campaign. Dave Prentis sent a personal and handwritten note to me which said: “Steve would have been so proud of you all!”

The case for Fair Pay for Teachers is as justified now as it was then, but as the economic background has changed, we have refocused our campaigning. We need to win back work/life balance through our campaign on workload and we must be ever vigilant to protect our pensions, not just in teaching but across the public sector. Our pensions are deferred salary. We earn them. Unlike Sir Fred Goodwin and no doubt many other failed bankers. Teachers’ pensions and the pensions of other public sector workers are far from overly generous. Two-thirds of retired women teachers have pensions of less than £10,000 a year. Not a fortune. We must ensure that we stand ready to protect our pensions should the need arise.

Our debate on the economic crisis, facing not just us but the entire world, has set out some demands. It is crucial that investment in education should not just be maintained but increased. Here in Wales we have talked on many occasions about the “funding fog”. It is now time for the sun to shine and for the last vestiges of the fog to be lifted. We can no longer accept the unfairly lower levels of funding to schools in Wales. If schools are to rise to the challenges they face, the governments, here in Wales as well as in Westminster, need to heed the Union’s call for class sizes of 20 by 2020, not discussed on our agenda this week but already policy, and more urgently to ensure that schools can deliver on the promise that from September 2009 teachers should only rarely cover across the whole of England and Wales.

Every child deserves to be taught by a qualified teacher for their whole time in school. If the 5 outcomes from the ECM agenda are to be met for every child, high quality teaching provided by fully qualified teachers, not, I might add, out-of-work bankers with six month’s training, are critical to that success.

The turnout at the TUC demonstration on March 28th from NUT members was really good to see. Although the echoes of the People’s March for Jobs from the 1980s were all too clear a reminder that the economic cycle of boom and bust has not been broken. Dispiriting isn’t it, to see the job loss and bankruptcies which marked the 70s and 80s back with a vengeance. Education International, our Global Federation, in a declaration in Washington last November, called on all education unions to campaign for:

“a renewed commitment to the provision of publicly financed quality public education.”

In the NUT we would add to that, democratically accountable schools as part of re-invigorated local authorities, not run by the privatisers who wish to see a market in everything.

Education International also assert, as do we, that education is a public good and not a commodity, it is a human right of all not a privilege of the few.

So at home in the UK we echo the call made by the TUC and many charities and NGOs to Put People First.

We endorse the call to Government by the TUC ahead of the budget later this month to raise taxes on the wealthiest of UK citizens and tackle tax avoidance and evasion. We welcome the Government’s intention to make moves against tax havens.

We agree with Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times when he writes that far higher debts and deficits have accumulated in times of war. His question is:

“Why should it be more alarming for governments to get into debt to put people into useful work satisfying human needs than to borrow for guns and tanks?”

So we agree, too, with Peter Hain and other backbenchers when they say that this is not the time for cuts in the public sector and in public spending but the time for greater investment.

Conference, we learned with regret from the recent UNICEF Report that our children are amongst the unhappiest in the world. Phil gave us a great speech on this.

Well, Conference, we in the NUT are determined to play our part in changing that.

Early years education is key to giving children the best possible start in life. We know however, that poverty shapes children’s development. We know from research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that poverty predicts educational outcomes more strongly in the UK than in any other OECD country, that by the age of 6 a less able child from a well off family is likely to have overtaken an able child born into a poor family and by age 14 children from poor families can be two years behind their better off peers.

The Government’s prioritisation of early years provision, precisely to help equality of educational opportunity, has been almost universally welcomed by those working in the sector, according to an NUT survey. The extension of provision from 12½ to 15 hours is no exception to this. However, the lack of funding or realistic plan for how this can be implemented has left many feeling that early years teachers are being used by Government to deliver its political commitments without the necessary support and investment.

Our members working with children in those all important early years need and deserve the best possible resources and they need and deserve the best possible conditions of service. What they don’t need is to be told that they can’t have PPA or a lunch break, or that setting up needs to be done in their own time. The great speech from Jane Walton of Wakefield covered it all.

The Union will work at national, regional and divisional level to ensure that early years education is not afforded to our children on the cheap. We will protect conditions for teachers and high quality provision for children.

As our children move into Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 – or what I still think of fondly as infants and juniors! – this education can suddenly become beset by ‘the standards agenda’.

One of the more dispiriting aspects of the Robin Alexander Review was his exposure of the fact that literacy and numeracy are not viewed by government as being ‘curriculum’ but ‘standards’.

Alexander opines that:

“As children progress through the primary phase, this statutory entitlement to a broad and balanced primary education is increasingly but needlessly compromised by the ‘standards agenda’.”

No surprise there, then Conference! Delegates have been coming to the rostrum at our conferences for two decades to say precisely that!

He goes on to say:

“The most conspicuous casualties are the arts, the humanities and those kinds of learning in all subjects which require time for talking, problem-solving and the extended exploration of ideas; memorisation and recall have come to be valued over understanding and enquiry and transmission of information over the pursuit of knowledge in its fuller sense.”

These are things, colleagues, which we have known for a very long time. Many, many children have been put through this.

Fortunately, many of our primary colleagues will have deployed all their creativity to make sure that the unrelenting and sterile pursuit of standards is not the only thing our children remember from their primary days.

On the question of the National Curriculum more widely, guess who said this:

“ - the National Curriculum should be slimmed down and a cap placed on the amount of time it can account for;

- the National Strategies should be discontinued in their present form

- the freedom Academies enjoy in relation to the National Curriculum should be extended to all schools.”

And who went on to add:

“… the level of central prescription and direction through the National Curriculum and National Strategies has deskilled teachers. At times, schooling has appeared more of a franchise operation dependant on a recipe handed down by Government rather than the exercise of professional expertise by teachers. The education system needs confident and well-qualified teachers capable of shaping the best possible education system for their pupils.”

Who was that? Not me, Conference, neither was it any other teachers’ union General Secretary but, in fact, Barry Sheerman in the report of the Select Committee for Children, Schools and Families on the National Curriculum.

I have, subsequently, heard him speak in meetings on the theme of the need for a National Curriculum from 0-19 which is coherent and based on an overarching statement of aims but which is underpinned by the principle that it should seek to prescribe as little as possible and of subsidiarity with decisions about the curriculum made at an appropriate, i.e., the lowest level – that is the school and the classroom.

Here, Conference, is another section you might enjoy:

- the idea that there is one best way to teach is not supported by research evidence and so should not be the basis for the determining of the National Curriculum.

And finally:

- the Department must not place pressure on schools to follow certain sets of non-statutory guidance such as it has done in the case of letters and sounds.

He recommends that the Department send a much stronger message to OFSTED, local authorities and school improvement partners and schools themselves as to the non-statutory nature of such guidance.

And colleagues, if the Department doesn’t send that strong message or even if it does the National Union of Teachers will.

This is the point from which we redouble our efforts to get workload under control and win back work/life balance. Conference, it will be good for teachers, good for children and good for education.

When we say teachers need 20% non-contact time, it’s not about a four day week, as some in the Press have suggested, but winning back a two day weekend. Conference, teachers are still amongst those who work the longest hours. We know that the teaching profession is one which suffers particularly from stress, as colleagues struggle to fit both work and a personal life into their day. It is a scandal that those who teach and nurture young people should bear the brunt of insufficient funding, always trying to paper over the cracks, for the benefit of their pupils.

We will build on the work of the Mental Health Working Party and work hard on all of their recommendations to make teaching the job we all want it to be.

From September this year, teachers will be entitled to only rarely cover. Teachers need this and we will be working with all of you to make sure that it becomes a reality. But we will also be working to ensure that pupils do not suffer as a result. The excellent debate on Motion 35 gives us a clear way forward.

One of Robin Alexander’s big issues is, of course, testing or what he calls “the elephant in the curriculum.” We are still waiting for the report of the expert group on assessment. Is it that Sir Tim, like the lone voice in ‘12 Angry Men’, is trying to turn the tide? Whatever the reason, we and our colleagues in the NAHT know that the tide has turned. If the Government doesn’t make the change to the testing regime for which we are calling, in case anyone is in any doubt, we will ballot to boycott the 2010 SATs.

The reform of assessment is a cause in which we believe and which we will pursue because we know that it will make a positive difference for all our children. I congratulate all those delegates who spoke so powerfully in the excellent SATs debate.

We are not alone in wanting change.

We stand alongside the NAHT, whose President was in the Hall for our debate, parents, authors, and of course the children themselves. Even the Secretary of State has recently announced that the KS2 SATs are “not set in stone”.

Following the example of our colleagues here in Wales, we will make England a SATs free zone. But not to replace them by a burdensome and bureaucratic imposed system of assessment. That would be irresponsible, perhaps even reckless! And not to be replaced by any other system designed to create league tables of schools. There are no league tables in Wales so why should we have them in England?

Our campaign will have an international dimension too. Our colleagues in Australia will be engaged in a struggle against the creation of league tables. Their cause is our cause.

One of the points I have made in many meetings since February 11th is that assessment didn’t start with SATs. Those of us who started teaching before the advent of the National Curriculum and its associated testing were not in the habit of wandering into classrooms and thinking “What shall I teach today?” We assessed children’s learning in a variety of ways as we went along. We gave feedback on learning (we may not have called it that). We wrote reports for parents that fully explained what children could do rather than relying on tests apparently designed to show us what they can’t do.

Our debate on assessment at this Conference has reflected the Union’s absolute commitment to children’s learning. What gets in the way of children’s learning, however, is not just Government prescription of National Curriculum tests. It is also the idea that what might work for one school will work for all.

The idea that somehow you can have a one size fits all approach to school improvement. And that one size fits all can apply to the assessment of pupils.

Assessing pupil progress has its roots in the idea that assessment has to be something much more than narrow testing. So far, so good. But the idea that a highly complex assessment matrix can be imposed on all schools is absurd.

Which is why, today, I am pleased to tell you that we, with the other teacher organisations, have secured guidance from the QCA that will apply to all schools. It says that the use of APP is voluntary. That APP has to be the subject of discussion and consultation with staff. And that schools can adapt APP for their particular circumstances.

Colleagues, this is an important step forward. After Conference, we will be issuing guidance to all schools, emphasising that the use of APP must be voluntary for teachers themselves and it should only be used if teachers think it’s valuable.

There may be merit in APP but only if it’s voluntary and optional – that is that it’s use or not, is to be determined by the professional judgement of a teacher – not the external constraints of ever more ‘accountability’. It will be a matter of professional judgement whether to use APP but it will be a matter of trade union organisation to ensure that such judgement is not overridden.

And on the question of accountability, in giving evidence to the Children, Schools and the Families Select Committee, the Union drew attention to the view that there are, as Tim Brighouse has described, twin axes of trust and accountability in education. At present, we have a low trust, high accountability, system. Given public funding and our responsibility for the educational chances of the nation’s young people, high accountability is acceptable but the quid pro quo must be that the systems by which we are held to account are fair and fit for purpose – so not OFSTED then, or league tables or the panoply of Performance Management, floor targets, etc. The teaching profession must enjoy the trust and confidence of parents, pupils and, above all, Government.

We have, in our statement published with the NAHT, demonstrated how we can be accountable for children’s outcomes. And, after all, in Finland, the most successful education system in the developed world, they have, as I was pleased to confirm to Evan Davis on Radio 4, no inspection system. We need a high trust, high accountability system with which teachers can properly engage, which acknowledges the status of teachers and in which teachers’ professional judgements are accepted as central. We have the policies, colleagues, we now need the commitment at all levels in the Union to make them the reality in our schools and our classrooms.

Delegates will have noticed the changes to the names of the sections of the agenda this year. These reflect the changes to our departmental structure in Hamilton House. We have made these changes in order to be able to respond ever more effectively to the needs of divisions and associations and to be able to respond, too, to the changing education landscape.

There have also been changes amongst our senior officials. We now have a head of communications, Julia Brandreth, who many of you will have met over the past few days. Likewise following Duncan Macfarlane’s retirement we have been joined by Lucy Anderson. My colleagues John Dixon, Amanda Brown and Andrew Morris remain with us in Hamilton House, albeit with post review job titles and responsibilities following the retirements of Arthur Jarman and Barry Fawcett.

John Bangs remains with us but is taking a well earned sabbatical next term, as Hazel told you earlier. He has done great work for this Union. We will miss him at the Education, Equalities and Professional Development Committee. And with Janet Theakston gone too, it will no longer be the Janet and John Committee.

What some of you know but it will be news to others, is that our Senior Solicitor who joined the Union at age 27 and was known as the boy solicitor, Graham Clayton, is to retire. Scarcely believable to look at him, I know, but he has been with the Union for over 30 years .He is the acknowledged expert in Education law in England and Wales. (And by the way the Cayman Islands but you’ll have to ask him about that). He will be a hard act to follow.

I wish Graham a long, glorious and active retirement. I shall very much enjoy continuing to work closely with him on the Steve Sinnott Foundation.

In the past year all of my colleagues have worked incredibly hard under difficult circumstances. I want to thanks them all publicly for all their efforts and in particular their unstinting support for me. I should also add a word of thanks to my family, Den, whose birthday is today, and our lovely daughters, Sophie and Eleanor

By the time we meet next year in Liverpool, we should be well on our way to a General Election.

Before then, however, we will have been through the European elections. European politics, in terms of the European Union, have not figured much on the agenda of NUT Conference. This year, however, there is a reason to pay much more attention than we might have done in the past. Last year we finally completed all the stages to set up a political fund. Conference made decisions that the Fund would be used to oppose racist and fascist ideology. I’m proud that this Union can now proclaim a message loudly and clearly this year that we oppose the BNP. We stand for a fair and just society. We stand for Hope not Hate. We stand for equality and respect. These are not the values of the BNP.

The BNP’s racist and fascist views are at odds with the aims of an education service that strives for the liberation of every learner’s potential irrespective of age, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnic origin or religion.

We must not allow low turnout to let the BNP win seats. I ask every delegate here and every NUT member to do everything they can to ensure that the BNP is defeated in the elections on June 4.

Conference, it’s been six years since the Social Partnership was set up. The Union has stayed true to its principles; principles which are not only the mark of a strong union, but also a union determined to protect education.

Our relationship with government has changed over a period of time. We do now talk to each other from time-to-time. I welcome that. Our expertise in education is unparalled. We need to make sure it is used to influence government policy whenever and wherever we can.

However, there are now wider issues on which we need to reflect.

From the beginning of the autumn term, we will be in the run-up to the General Election. The prospect for 2010 is not only economic turbulence but political turbulence too.

I am not going to predict the outcome of the General Election. But what I will predict is that, if the Conservatives get in, we will be in a whole new ball game and if Labour is elected, we don’t want the same old ball game.

In difficult times, there is a need for maximum trade union solidarity, the largest teacher organisation in Europe must work alongside other education unions to weather the storm of possible political change.

I value our good relationship with UCU. Our statement on 14-19 was an excellent piece of work. We will support their conference to defend higher education on May 9th and their campaign to prevent huge numbers of job cuts at London Metropolitan University. The university with more black and minority ethnic students that the whole of the Russell Group put together.

We will support our colleagues at North West London College.

I value, to use Mick Brookes’ words, “Our good and deepening relationship with the NAHT.”

I value our good working relationship with UNISON.

I want good and working relationships with the NASUWT and the ATL, too.

That is why I am pleased to have accepted Chris Keates’ invitation to attend the NASUWT conference this year and that my colleague, John Dixon, represented the Union at the ATL Conference.

This is not about professional unity for the sake of it. It will be absolutely imperative in the next few years for all trade unions to work together to protect, defend and promote public services. This is professional unity because it’s best for children, best for teachers and best for the education service.

This does not mean burying differences but it does mean trying to work together and trying to find common cause. We know that NUT members and those of other teachers’ organisations can work together well at local and regional level. We must find more ways to create that unity at a national level. It may not always seem like it but we can find more that unites us than divides us.

Conference, we face an economic crisis which threatens the very roots of our public education service.

This crisis faces us with very real challenges. Education is still being funded under the current comprehensive spending review, but there are straws in the wind. Some local authorities have set standstill budgets for 2009-2010 and the huge problems in 16-19 funding are only now becoming apparent as was clear in our priority debate.

I want to propose that we, as the NUT, with all education unions and the TUC, seek to establish the values and a programme on which we want to fight in protecting our services in front of the next spending round.

We want:

• a good local school for every child and every community;

• fair funding for post-16;

• equality of access to high quality education and to all public services;

• trust and confidence in public sector workers;

• community solidarity;

• the status of qualified teachers recognised and valued both in salaries and conditions;

• work life balance that sees workload and central imposition reduce and fun return to the classroom;

• free, State comprehensive education for all;

• and, of course, no more SATs or league tables.

Not the atomisation of privatisation and outsourcing. Not schools subject to the profit principle. Not Academies or even Trusts.

Conference, in the last year you will have often heard the phrase “the audacity of hope”. I want to borrow that elegant phrase to sum up the approach that has long been fundamental to everything that we do in the Union.

We are not a union that is afraid to speak out for what we believe is right. Our vision for the education of our children is ambitious and makes demands on those who hold the purse strings. We are not interested in providing only insurance or a safety net. We are not interested in agreeing the lowest common denominator.

Our vision is firmly grounded in the daily experiences of our members. We in the NUT know that our policies arise from the challenges our members face everyday of their teaching lives. Delegates to this conference set the agenda for the Union, whether you are a first time delegate or have, like Elwyn Bishop, attended over 55 conferences.

We are proud to be a positive forward thinking union, providing the best professional advice and support to members. Proud too, of giving teachers the skills and confidence to address and solve problems in the workplace. And proud that we represent the aspiration of all members for a well funded comprehensive education service, from nursery through to sixth form college and beyond, where every child and young person really does matter and where teachers have the professional status they deserve.

I’ve been proud to be the Acting General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers. I believe in a confident, optimistic, forward and outward looking union with policies which work for all children, all teachers and for all our communities. For young teachers and older colleagues, for teachers black and white, LGBT and disabled members.

Colleagues, we should all be proud to be a part of the largest and most influential teachers’ union in Europe. As we leave this Conference, we must take with us our vision of a progressive twenty first century education service into every education setting in England and Wales.

Let’s encourage all those who are not yet members to join us in our quest for an education system and for a society that is truly good for children and good for teachers. Because Conference, nothing less will do.

I have been proud to be the Acting General Secretary of this great union. I would be very proud to be your General Secretary.

Thank you.