Strict Embargo

STRICT EMBARGO

1300 HOURS

TUESDAY, 10 APRIL 2012

President, Delegates

Let me begin by congratulating the President on her address which was engaging, entertaining and hard hitting. Her conduct in the Chair has been calm and good humoured. To Chair NUT Conference is an honour and a privilege, as those of us who have done it know very well. But it is also a challenge and one to which you have risen very well, President. I look forward to working with you as we move into our new year following this Conference.

We have a new President and a newly elected Executive, including the first holders of the seats elected by our LGBT members and our disabled members to whom I offer congratulations. This Executive must now rise to the challenge set by you, the delegates, at our supreme policymaking forum. And that, I’m sure they will do effectively and with dedication.

The year in which Charles Dickens died was the same year in which the National Union of Teachers was founded. Mr Dickens wrote many quotable lines: one of his more famous springs readily to mind when we reflect on where we are in teacher trade union policy and politics – it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Some of the very best times have been in the pensions campaign. June 30/November 30 and much in between. As well as our London strike on March 28th, alongside UCU.

Our pensions campaign, thoughis being conducted against a Government with a cabinet of millionaires. People who are very far removed from the real life of ordinary people in Britain. George Osborne’s recent Budget was Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poorest and giving to the richest. 2012 will be remembered by many for the race to the bottom in pensions, pay and public service provision.

Already we’ve seen EMA all but go and benefits under attack. Then the Chancellor chooses to make life even more comfortable for the most comfortable. The top rate of tax cut from 50% to 45%, with a view to bringing it down to 40%. At a time when our younger teachers will end up paying out close to 50% in a combination of tax, National Insurance, repayments of debt incurred by going into HE and, of course, higher pension contributions. And we all know that the pensions contribution increases are nothing more than an additional tax on the public sector. Our demand for a proper valuation of the teacher scheme was rejected by Government, yet we also know that the scheme is sustainable and affordable so our campaign on pensions is fair and reasonable.

Colleagues our debate on the priority motion on pensions has given us a clear way forward. No-one ever said that it would be anything less than a long campaign. We, in the NUT, have been in the lead in this campaign and will continue to be. We all know there will have to be more industrial action if we are to win. The question we have been debating is how best to build the support of our members to take that action. We still need, of course, to keep up all the lobbying and petitioning too.

I think we were all heartened to hear that our colleagues in the NASUWT seem to be moving towards escalating their campaign. Our Union, the NASUWT, the EIS, the SSTA, the UCU and UCAC have all rejected the Government’s pension plan. The NUT stands willing to work with any and all of these unions to advance the campaign. Teachers simply should not have to work till 68 or possibly even 69 or 70 to get a full pension. Our unions working together will be able to mount action which will really challenge the Government. This is a challenge to all these unions. I am sure we can put aside any differences and work together to defend teachers and our pensions. Conference, I know the National Union of Teachers stands ready to do this.

Let me now turn to education matters. Education theory and practice are informed by a great deal of research. Michael Gove is quite keen on it and so am I. But we draw very different conclusions from it. One of the things on which we agree, however, is an assertion made by Andreas Schleicher, the OECD education guru, that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teaching force.

The big question that arises from this assertion is how do we ensure that we have well-prepared teachers of ‘high quality’ in our schools and colleges? Well, the answer lies, according to research by John MacBeath earlier this year into what he calls ‘satisfiers’ - drivers which are essential to teachers’ sense of professional fulfilment. They include: autonomy; being valued; being trusted; being listened to; time for learning, teaching and planning; collegiality; initiative; creativity; scope for innovation and experimentation; and challenge.

I don’t know if the Secretary of State has read John MacBeath’s work but if he has, he doesn’t seem to have understood it. How could anyone, least of all a Secretary of State for Education, call teachers and their unions ‘enemies of promise’ when we are so clearly wedded to developing our own professionalism and skills and so concerned about children and young people? And when we know, as Hazel Danson told Conference the last time we were here in Torquay, that teachers are the guardians of standards in their own classrooms. In the National Union of Teachers, we want nothing but the best for every child in every classroom every day and we want the best for teachers too.

As an American colleague told me: “You can’t put children first if you put teachers last.”

Yet more research, this time in 2011 and by Michael Fallon, talks about the wrong drivers by which he means deliberate policy that has little chance of achieving the desired result of an effective and successful teaching force.

These include:

• using test results and teacher appraisal to reward or punish teachers and schools rather than building professional capacity;

• promoting individual rather than group solutions;

• fragmented strategies rather than integrated systemic strategies.

Conference, we didn’t need research to tell us these things because years in the classroom and in the NUT have given us a clear perspective on what works.

I thought I’d borrow an idea to share with you from the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association about how teachers are viewed. Some of these ideas were reinforced in a recent NUT survey.

Thisis what teachers love doing.

This is what some people believe we do! All those long holidays, although it does look as though she’s doing a bit of lesson planning.

Perhapsthis is what Mr Gove would like us to do.

Alas,this is what the job of a teacher looks like to many of us much of the time.

Colleagues, I think this cartoon says it all about our place in society and the real value of a teacher versus a banker or a hedge fund manager.

So, the Government must learn to value and respect teachers for the great job we do. Where would they be without us.

A Performance Management system which is designed to harass and undermine teachers cannot achieve a profession that works well and students who achieve.

Some of you may remember this from last year. This was President Obama on how to improve education. It says “We must fire bad teachers”. Through the dedicated efforts of our sister unions in the US, the AFT and the NEA, do you know what Arne Duncan – Secretary for Education in the US administration, told an International Conference this year:

You can’t fire your way to high quality teaching

He’s right of course.

But colleagues, neither can you cut the pay of teachers and attack their pensions, demean their professionalism and expect the job to be an attractive option for new graduates.

As you have heard, Michael Gove has written to the STRB to say he wants teachers’ pay to be market facing, as we heard in our debate. Local pay almost certainly means lower pay. As we know, cutting public sector pay, in this case teachers’ pay, in areas of generally lower pay will have the effect of depressing further local economies.

We all know that in a National Service, locally delivered, national pay scales are central. National Pay Scales are, as Helen Andrews said, “not an accident of history”. We won them and we must defend them.

A significant headline from the TUC is that the private sector doesn’t use local pay so why should the public sector? The debate on the priority motion has set a course for campaigning on this. Strengthened of course by the Amendment. We’re pleased you made it Gawain.

It’s worth pointing out too that, when deregulation was brought in to the Health Service after 12 months of detailed negotiations, all pay settlements came in within 0.1% of each other.Opposing cuts to pay and pensionsand opposing privatisation in all its forms are all priority campaigns for the Union.

We have to win back the profession. We know what professional standards are. Our debate on Ofsted set the scene for a reinvigorated campaign for professional autonomy and an accountability framework in the interests of teachers and children. No-one, least of all the National Union of Teachers, ever said that teachers should not be accountable. We all know that, although it isn’t enough, a good deal of public money is spent on education so we do have to be accountable. But not to the kind of Ofsted trained ‘consultant’ who is brought in to schools ostensibly to support teachers.

Here’s an example: a consultant comes in to school and plans to see a Year 6 class. The teacher tells the consultant that she’s welcome to come in. The class will be in the library for 30 minutes. The class goes to the library, is well behaved and on task. What might you reasonably expect as feedback from such a session? “Well done, that’s great, it’s nice to see a library being used by the children.” “How nice to see children so engaged.” “A library is such a great resource in a school, glad to see that children know how to use it.”

Well colleagues, think again. This is a person subject to Ofsted training with whom we are dealing. The feedback actually was:

I’m not going to grade that lesson (who ever said she should have been going to anyway, by the way) as it would have been unsatisfactory. The children were just reading! Just reading, colleagues, how wide off the mark can these people be?

Support can come in a variety of forms but I think we all know what helpful professional support looks and feels like, and what is something rather different. When I try to think about Ofsted and support, that expression about how a rope supports a hanged man springs to mind.

I simply can’t improve on the brilliant speech from Greg Fox. I would like us to put it up on the NUT website. And by the way, I hope the wedding goes well.

The boycott of SATs was mentioned in passing on Sunday, with a comment that it achieved nothing and therefore we shouldn’t contemplate boycotting other things we oppose. I contest that it achieved nothing at all but leaving that aside, the Union is right to oppose the use of the phonics check and to make all the professional arguments against it at our disposal. Michael Rosen is on record as saying that he can decode Italian. Many of you in the hall would equally be able to decode Italian or Spanish but, like Michael, you would be unable to understand either of these languages. I imagine that anyone who has given this a moment’s thought would know that reading involves comprehension.

Our survey of members on this very issue is clear. 92 per cent said that the phonics check told them nothing that they did not already know but that large numbers of children failed. Some of the children failed because they were already more accomplished readers who were trying to make sense of the nonsense words. As the Croydon delegate said on Sunday, “we really are now testing nonsense”. So, if the flawed outcomes of this check are used to establish league tables, we would certainly be right to take action against that.

I just put this cartoon in because I think it’s great.

In the 55 school days from the beginning of the spring term to March 22nd, there have been around 20 unreasonable, carping, insulting and just plain wrong announcements or statements from the DfE or Ofsted to berate, belittle or undermine teachers.

And Michael Gove has the nerve to say that he wants to support teachers and encourage in the so-called brightest and best. And Schools’ Minister, Nick Gibb, says some of his best friends are teachers. I wonder what they talk about.

Anyway, I won’t go through all 20 but here is a sample:

January 4th – Mr Gove says that those who oppose the drive to academies are happy with failure and “the enemies of promise”.

January 19th – Nick Gibb trying to bolster his ideological bid for universal synthetic phonics, which I might add, has been rejected in many places:

“Every week that goes by is another week that children are missing out on the best possible teaching of reading.”

February 9th – Michael Wilshaw: My view is that we have tolerated mediocrity for far too long – it has settled into the system.

Ofsted – March 2nd – I love this one: Not enough music in music lessons! (Perhaps they should have thought of that before music provision became the target of cuts year on year). By the way, this might be a good point at which to praise our Union for the involvement we have with Music for Youth. The performers we have had with us over Conference are just a small fraction of the enthusiastic and talented young people with whom Music for Youth works.

Our involvement with MfY culminates each year in the Schools’ Prom, in November at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s always a fantastic festival of music of every sort. If you haven’t been, I do encourage you to try to get there.

Let me give you just 2 further examples of the kinds of things we hear from Government.

On March 15th, at a ‘’Spectator’ Conference, it was tweeted that Michael Gove said “Our schools widen inequality.”

And finally, I’m sure you know now schools have been deemed responsible for the riots of last year – and will be fined if there’s any recurrence.

So, the fight is on to promote our policies and positions and to consider where the blame for civil unrest and differential academic outcomes should fall. This Government, with its cabinet of millionaires and desire to privatise state education out of existence is not on the side of working class families and vulnerable children. It does not see the trade union values of solidarity and standing together, of the need for social justice and equity in society as central to a decent society. The End Child Poverty Campaign reports research from the Institute of Fiscal Studiesestimating that, under this Government, 100,000 more children a year will be plunged into poverty. And of course, we are all too well aware of the scandal of unemployment, in particular amongst young people aged 16 to 24. How hollow it rings from a pompous Prime Minister who pretends to be partial to pasties when he insists that we’re all in this together.

On May 3rd, there will be elections in many parts of the country. There will be the much heralded Mayoral Election in London and council seats up in many places. There is a real need for NUT members to be involved in this democratic process.

The BNP was soundly defeated in the last local elections. The work done in Barking and Dagenham and Haveringand in Stoke on Trent, as well as elsewhere, played a big part in that defeat. But these parties, so-called parties, have not given up or gone away. Both the BNP and the British Freedom Party, are looking for seats again in these elections. And the EDL and WDL seek to demonstrate whenever they can.

The current economic situation will be ruthlessly exploited by the BNP and their ilk. Some people who do not themselves subscribe to the racist and fascist ideology of the BNP may find themselves superficially attracted to some of their messages. That’s why we have to be involved in campaigning during this election period. In the NUT, we oppose racism and fascism wherever and whenever it appears but during election times we have to up our game and be on the streets in large numbers.

The Union has made funds available to ‘Hope not Hate’ and ‘Unite Against Fascism’ to ensure that there is material to distribute everywhere that the racists and fascists seek to stand. I commend these publications and the videos made by both organisations to you.

There will be days of action called by both ‘Hope not Hate’ and ‘Unite Against Fascism’. I urge you all to give as much time and energy to this campaigning as you can.

I want also to mention in the context of our anti-racist work, our relationship with Show Racism the Red Card. Since last Conference, the NUT has been invited to join the Show Racism the Red Card Hall of Fame. It was my great pleasure to receive the award on behalf of the Union, alongside Len McLuskey from Unite. I am immensely proud of the work we do with Show Racism the Red Card. And in this year when there have been ugly incidents between players in addition to unacceptable behaviour on the terraces, there is alas, still only too much need for this work. Show Racism the Red Card has produced brilliant material to help teachers deal with both racism and, specifically, Islamophobia. I hope you had the chance to visit the stand, but if not, please make sure you look them up. And if you happen to be in London on April 17th, do go along to Unison Headquarters to the launch of the new Show Racism the Red Card material dealing with homophobia.