Bradford NUT

22 Edmund Street

Bradford

BD5 0BH

Tel 01274 414664

Fax 01274 414665

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Bradford NUT General Secretary’s Annual Report 2011

Still The Biggest and The Best! Bradford NUT’s membership, which passed 3000 in 2006, continued to grow in 2011 as it has done every year since 1992. Teachers clearly believe that membership of a trade union that is independent of Government, and able to stand up for them and what they believe in, is more important today than ever.Locally we are both a strong campaigning organisation and a source of support for members individually and collectively when difficulties and challenges arise.

Pensions – we led the way and others followed!

The biggest campaign of 2011 was undoubtedly that of our justified campaign against the barefaced theft of our pension entitlement. Let’s not forget that we agreed an affordable pension scheme only back in 2006. These settlements are supposed to last a generation but the government came back to plunder the scheme for the short term purpose of reducing the budget deficit. It is to the Union’s credit that our slogan, “Pay More, Work Longer and Get Less “ has become part of the public and trade union consciousness about our struggle to gain a fair pension. The Union has deliberately targeted our younger members on this issue because it is they who will pay the biggest price of failure to achieve a fair pension. The Union’s famous pension calculator has opened many young teachers’ eyes to the massive effect of the government’s proposals. Our older members have understood their obligation not to pull the ladder up after them and have equally joined in the campaign this year. The highlights were undoubtedly the TUC Public Sector Union demonstration in London on the 26th March. Bradford NUT members took part and the size was truly awesome and the solidarity it engendered was heartening.

By the NUT Conference in late April it was clear that the government was still not negotiating seriously and together with the ATL,UCU and PCS we made the absolutely correct decision to ballot members on strike action for 30th June. The ballot was successful and the Day of Action received an immense amount of publicity. Bradford’s day of action received television and press coverage, particularly of our impressive march to City Hall, and our striking new NUT banner (thanks to the Murch family for their work on this) featured prominently on the front page of the Telegraph and Argus. The publicity was mostly understanding of the justified reasons for our action and the unions totally destroyed the affordability argument being peddled by the government. It was good to be alongside our colleagues in the ATL during this action and it made the Union’s aim of “One Union for All Teachers” feel a bit more achievable than it has done in previous times.

We knew, however, that one day action would not be enough but the success of the action encouraged other unions to see that action was needed to put pressure on this government to change. This led to the 27 public sector union strike of 30th November. The pressure of this proposed action led the government to make some last minute limited concessions after 10 months of stonewalling to try to prevent the action taking place. The strike went ahead, however, and the scale of it did justify it being termed historic. In the month since then, the unity achieved on that day has unfortunately not continued and we have seen some of our sister unions falter in their resolve to protect their younger members by signing up to the Heads of Agreement tabled by the Government. The NUT (and NASUWT) believe that this was a mistake. The government has been acting like a bully from start to finish and their ultimatum needed to be faced down to achieve more for our younger members. The NUT Executive is meeting in early January to see how to continue the campaign and it is encouraging that the two largest teachers’ unions have refused to be browbeaten.

Academies, Trusts and Free Schools

The other big challenge during 2011 has been to oppose the government policy of “academisation” of every school it can bribe or force to convert to an Academy. Bradford has been vulnerable to this policy because of the division of responsibility over the last 10 years between Serco Education Bradford (responsible for school improvement) and Bradford Council. This division has undermined schools’ connection with the Council and made it more difficult to oppose the break-up of the relationship between the Council and schools particularly at secondary level. A number of schools have been put under tremendous pressure to convert to Academies because of their exam results; some have shamelessly quoted the financial advantage (gained by effectively stealing off the others) and others have been panicked by others going and “being left behind”. Needless to say those schools choosing this route have been short-sighted and the Union campaigned with members to oppose conversion during the year. Particular mention should be made of the vigorous and principled campaign of members at Ilkley Grammar School who fought conversion until the last moment including being on the verge of taking strike action. The Union developed a protocol over the year for protecting conditions of service and negotiating rights which has been accepted by several schools converting to an Academy and we will continue to press for its acceptance in any future conversions.

Two Free Schools began in Bradford in September -Rainbow Primary and Kings’ Science secondary. Free schools pose a real danger to terms and conditions because they are “greenfield” sites where there are no conditions transferred from an existing establishment. The schools can literally set up any terms and conditions. We have been involved in looking at and commenting on some terms and conditions which unsurprisingly are worse than existing national terms and conditions. The establishment of more free schools next year sponsored by Dixon’s and possibly Bradford Girls’ Grammar means that we need to be even more active next year.

A Privatisation Ends!

The contract with Serco finally ended on 28th July and staff with Education Bradford finally TUPE transferred back to the Council after 10 years of a failed experiment with Bradford’s children. This is not to blame the staff who had no control over this experiment. A business model based on profit meant interminable wrangling over contract changes and short term measures to protect profits like cutting Educational Psychologist posts. Serco is already history in Bradford but leave a bad taste especially when it comes back for its “incentive” payment for last year. Thankfully, that payment ( £1 million) and other savings resulting from the end of the contract can be put to better use to protect jobs in the education budget for 2012/13.

Council Budget Cuts Hit Services and Children and more to come

The Council issued a s.188 redundancy notice to take effect in the Budget Year 2011/12. This has amounted to a cut across the Council of 1000 staff at the time of writing, thankfully all but a small number by voluntary severance and natural wastage. Inevitably this has meant cuts to services to children and schools. Some school improvement staff employed by Education Bradford, but nonetheless a victim of the cuts were made redundant in April. Other education staff have been made redundant since then following the TUPE transfer. Further cuts across the Council for 2012/13 have been announced amounting to 600 fte posts. More education staff have been put at risk of redundancy this time because Education Bradford have been brought within the latest s.188 notice issued to all Council staff in November. At particular risk are staff who provide services to some of our most needy children in the area of EMA and Behaviour services. The Union is working hard to ensure that there are no compulsory redundancies and that equality impact assessments are actually seriously considered. Schools are bound to notice the difference that these cuts will make if implemented.

Partnership Arrangements

One of the features of the post Education Bradford Scene is the setting up of partnership arrangements between schools. The most developed of these is the Bradford Secondary Partnership to which most Bradford secondaries subscribe at a cost of £10,000 pa. The partnership has started school review visits which have raised questions with members in schools about the rules and protocols regarding these visits. We will be taking this up with the partnership in the coming year. Other partnerships at Primary level illustrate the danger of the break-up of LA school improvement services that has occurred over the last year. Partnerships are advertising for school improvement staff on an ad hoc basis that is bound to reduce the effectiveness of service delivery. Our remaining members in central services are responding to try to persuade schools to invest in a sustainable service which will serve the long term needs of Bradford schools.

Health and Safety – Bradford NUT runs one of the most effective systems of health and safety support for teachers in any part of the country. As well as regular inspections of all schools, handling the consequences of BSF, and support for individual members suffering from ill-health, this year we continued with our pioneering work on stress risk assessmentand joined the campaign to rid all schools of Asbestos. We also continued to follow up all assaults and abuse reported by members.

Equalities/Anti Racism – Our Equalities Committee continues to meet half termly, facilitated by Alison Hill, equalities officer. 2011 included being involved in and attending the excellent regional equalities conference in June, with many memorable speakers including the charismatic Elly Barnes from Schools Out,( whose excellent work on challenging homophobia in schools has been recognized (even!) by OFSTED), and authors Alan Gibbons and Richard O’Neil . In November, Alison attended an inspiring one day conference at Elly Barnes’ school in Stoke Newington on creating an LGBT friendly school and the benefits for all. The Geoff Robinson Fund funded sweatshirts for the student drama group, the Ignite Theatre Company at Tong school in their equalities work in school, particularly in challenging homophobic bullying.

See our equalities noticeboard on our website for resources, events and dates of meetings.

It’s The Workload and The Bullying, Stupid!...and it’s getting worse – Because Bradford is one of the areas of the country with the most poverty and deprivation, because Governments do not fund adequately to address this deprivation, and because more children therefore underachieve in Bradford than in most places, teachers in Bradford suffer more bullying and harassment than in most places. The mechanism is simple. Schools don’t meet targets that don’t take into account the difficulties they face. The Spanish Inquisition that is OFSTED descends on more of them more often and puts more into categories. The Local Authority, Education Bradford (up to 28th July), Headteachers, school governors, whose necks are all on the line in these circumstances are all under pressure to monitor teachers more often and more intrusively in schools that have “failed” and schools that might do so. The monitoring is accompanied by increasing bureaucratic workload, and by the singling out of individual teachers for particular pressure in a way that happens far less often in more advantaged areas. This cycle is getting worse and some school managements have resorted to knee jerk and counterproductive responses involving non-stop unfocussed, “learning walks” and “drop ins”. So-called support programmes are seen as punitive with unachievable targets.

We deal locally with more and more cases where people rightly complain of absurd levels of observations. Local NUT officers can and do intervene on behalf of school memberships and individuals, but the best defence will always be for members collectively to say “No” to unreasonable demands. This will be even more important to do with the performance management arrangements due to be introduced in 2012 by Michael Gove and the appointment of Michael Wilshaw, with a clear steer to be a rottweiler, as head of Ofsted.

Representing Members – The bulk of our time as local NUT officers continues to be spent on advising and representing individual members. The most common issues are ill-health (often the result of stress, excessive workload, assaults and bullying), pensions advice, alleged lack of competence (often when the school itself is having to find scapegoats for OFSTED criticism or a low position in league tables) and allegations made by pupils or parents (the vast majority of which are found to have no substance). We also have a small number of very demanding cases where poor school management requires us to intervene on behalf of staff, usually with our colleagues from other teaching and non-teaching unions.Changes of school status, such as to Academies and Trusts, require us to do a lot of work to ensure that individually and collectively members are protected during the transfer. Staff working together, often across unions, can make a difference with union support. One example during the year was Victoria Primary School, Keighley. Staff faced with being forced into a confederation with other schools by Education Bradford sought union support and both teacher and non-teacher unions supported staff in successfully resisting the change.

Annual Conference -The vote at Conference was unanimous in favour of committing the Union to fight the Government’s pension plans and to ballot for industrial action. Other important motions included continuing to oppose Academies and Free Schools, supporting members in Nursery Schools who are faced with more work for the same pay, raising awareness of Islamophobia and celebrating diversity, and calling for improved training to support disabled teachers. Amongst Bradford delegates Steve Pickles made a speech on Teacher Workload and the destructive impact of Ofsted inspections. Dean Narayn-Lee was to speak on a motion supporting the struggle of Bangladeshi garment makers for a minimum wage but unfortunately this section of business ran out of time. Ian Murch, as National Treasurer, once again rose to the challenge of presenting the Union’s accounts in an entertaining way.

Recruiting and Supporting New Teachers – Bradford maintains a strong local involvement in the recruitment work of the union; we look after NQTs in any difficulties they may encounter; and we encourage participation in the Union.

How We Communicate – our website continues to develop as a noticeboard and as a resource for our members and our school representatives; we have regular well attended general meetings at the International Restaurant on Morley Street in Bradford, getting together over a meal at the end (Join us some time!); we produce a regular newsletter, emailed as well as posted to many people and on our website; we organise training for our school representatives.

Who Represents You?– This is the first year since 1980 that Bradford District NUT has had a new General Secretary. For the past 30 years the Association has been led by Ian Murch who over the years has also increasingly taken on national responsibilities as Executive member for West Yorkshire and latterly as National Treasurer of the NUT. NUT members throughout West Yorkshire will have heard him countless times on Radio Leeds. “Look North” and “Calendar” are regular visitors to the Bradford NUT Office for filmed interviews with him. “Look North” interviewed him outside Bradford Academy on the strike day of 30th June and Ian was delighted to be joining the picket line organised by members outside the school. His increasingly youthful appearance in photos in the T&A is a mystery comparable to Dorian Gray. Ian is respected by politicians, officers and headteachers throughout Bradford and he truly does know where “all the bodies are buried“. Bradford teachers owe him an immense amount for the protection and enhancement of their conditions over the years. He continues to be a part of our officer team as Assistant Secretary.

We have to look to the future and have added to our team of local officers in the past couple of years.Alison Hill has rapidly and effectively taken on a leading role as a casework officer. Deane Narayn-Lee has helped in the crucial task of recruiting and maintaining school representatives. Jane Rendle, Stuart Davies and Miriam Murch all have many years’ experience of representing members, campaigning and communicating with schools.The Association employs Lynne, our very experienced and friendly clerical assistant who has worked with us for 26 years. Our team of Health and Safety representatives - Vernon Addison, Steve Boddy, Jim Cartwright, and Stephen Pickles have continued to make Bradford schools a safer place to work. Beverley Lotz and Quentin Deakin ably chaired our Association meetings over the year and continued our tradition of always ending the meetings at 6.30on the dot. I have taken over as General Secretary at the same time as the biggest change in the education landscape since “Gerbil”, the Great Education Reform Bill of 1987. Compared to a cuddly gerbil, the Academies Act and the Education Act of this coalition government would better be likened to an attack dog. This government and Michael Gove, in particular, arecarrying out a bullying ideological attack on local democratic control of schools using their powers in a threatening and vicious manner. Like all bullies you have to stand up to them or they walk over you as we have seen in the pensions’ dispute. Inevitably, more Academies and Free schools will affect the way that the Union represents its members. We have to plan for this both locally and nationally so that theseattacks are thwarted as far as possible.