Good Morning Conference: Colleagues, Friends, Family

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BY MARILYN HARROP AT NATIONAL UNION OF TEACHERS ANNUAL CONFERENCE

SATURDAY 7 APRIL 2012

Good morning conference: colleagues, friends, family.

I stand before you this morning, an extremely proud woman.

It gives me immense pleasure to be here, democratically elected by members, as National President of our great Union, the National Union of Teachers.

My pleasure is compounded by the fact that I describe myself as a Union pleb. Until I became an officer two years ago I had never held a major position within the Union nationally, although I have been a career-long member of my local association, City of Sunderland, holding a variety of responsibilities, and well-known regionally.

To me, my election is proof of our Union’s democracy and the value placed on grass roots members.

My unionisation began in the cradle; maybe earlier, by osmosis.

Both of my grandfathers were coal miners. From one, I heard the relayed debates from the local Working Men’s Club; from the other, the discussions from the local non-conformist – and teetotal - Chapel we attended. We grandchildren were meant to be seen and not heard, and so I listened – a lot!

Though they had different views on some things, above all they valued family ties and community, the teams of men they worked with and the trades union movement. Through both of them, and my grandmothers, I was exposed to what sociologists call “organic working class culture” – and of one thing I am sure, none of them would have appreciated our current Government!

My parents were only one step removed from this. My mother, in isolation hospital with scarlet fever when she should have been taking scholarship examinations, began work in an office at the age of fourteen. There were no second chances or lifelong education opportunities in the Thirties.

By virtue of being the youngest child in the family, my father was able to remain in full time education to the age of sixteen, achieving a School Certificate – the English Baccalaureate of the 1930s. His accountancy training was interrupted by call-up to the Second World War, and after leaving the RAF he trained as a teacher.

I like to think that I might be the original NUT baby. By the time I was born, on my father’s first pay day as a teacher, he was involved in the NUT, local politics and the local Church. Perhaps because of my mother’s experience, my father was ahead of his time in promoting equal opportunities for girls and boys, and always, positive discrimination in favour of the least advantaged.

Together, my parents made a formidable team. They had been friends since childhood and had genuinely shared values and aspirations for their family. Between them, they provided nurture and stimulation for the body, the mind and the spirit.

In the early morning of the day I started school, my first sibling, Howard, was born. I credit that event with possibly being the reason why I found school so congenial. Those of you who know him, as Divisional Secretary and former Executive member, may have an insight into that view. Another brother, Nigel, completed our family some eleven years later.

I’m delighted that a large selection of my immediate family are here today: my daughter, Stephanie; my son, David and his wife Kathryn; my brothers, already mentioned, Howard and Nigel, and Nigel’s wife Julie, not forgetting my cousin Jack, who is my Conference Secretary. The only member missing is my mother Marjorie: poor vision and mobility preclude her attendance, but she remains indomitable, frequently reminding her carers of their democratic duties and the suffragettes who died so that they could have the vote.

I’d like to welcome my family here today and express my thanks for their support and encouragement.

For most of us, as we make our way through life, in order to flourish we need support, encouragement and a pinch of inspiration.

In the first instance, those qualities come from the home environment.

The next sphere of influence comes from experiences beyond the home; playgroup, nursery, then school.

Next, our friends impact on how we perform and react, each one an influence in the processes that shape us.

By the time we move beyond school, we tend to have developed our own world pictures, but we still respond to the flashes of inspiration around us, to authors, politicians, great leaders, moving events.

There is plenty of inspiration within the Union.

It’s a privilege to stand here on the podium and look around at you Conference delegates, Union staff and guests. There’s plenty of inspiration out there.

I can see plenty of people who’ve offered me support, encouragement and inspiration: Division colleagues from City of Sunderland, Regional colleagues from the North, staff from Northern Region, other regional offices and the Wales Office and staff I’ve come to rely on in Head Office.

As a woman, I’m appreciative of the fine example set by women NUT members. As a Union, we have a tradition of strong women activists, and this is particularly true of my home region, where we have had a series of female National Executive members, the first female Regional Secretary, three National presidents and two National Treasurers. These have blazed a truly inspirational trail, and I am indebted to them. Our current General Secretary, Christine Blower, is this Union’s first woman GS – another trail-blazer.

It is almost exactly four years since the untimely death of our late General Secretary, Steve Sinnott. Another inspiration, Steve was the first former comprehensive school pupil to be first, National President and later Deputy then General Secretary.

Each year since his passing, Conference has reflected on his great service to the Union, and the legacy he left. The Foundation established in his memory was launched three years ago, and is committed to one of Steve’s great passions, the furtherance of Millennium Development Goal 2 – the provision of universal primary education by 2015. If you visit the Foundation stand in the Exhibition, you can find out about its achievements so far. Best of all, you could pledge your support to the cause.

We all need inspiration in our lives.

Next time you need some inspiration, look to your Union!

Throughout my education, at good, local, state schools I had a succession of teachers with the X-factor – that little bit of magic that turns a good teacher into a great teacher and an inspiration.

My first teacher, Mrs. Welsh, was a wonderful woman who taught us to read using a series of large, self-painted pictures, each depicting a teddy bear with words written underneath. “Teddy”. “This is Teddy”. “Teddy can run”. “Teddy can jump”. She soon had us reading from books, and interestingly enough, there was not a synthetic phonic in sight – no nonsense words like ‘vap’, ‘bim’ or ‘blurst’, which sound like escapee expletives from a Batman film – though we did do blending and sounding. Her wonderfulness was confirmed, when every Friday afternoon, depending on what your mam said you could have, she bought us all chews or ice lollies – with wooden sticks. As an aside, a lolly was the treat of choice. They were home made in the corner shop, virulently coloured, and if your stick revealed the shop’s name, you could take it back for a free lolly! I wonder if the shop re-used the sticks? Probably!

I realise that I’ve just described a school scenario that will be as alien to some of you as life on Mars would be to me.

When I began teaching, in 1973 (incidentally, clearly an exceptional cohort as both the General Secretary and Ex-President also began teaching then), there were similarities between the educational landscapes of the Fifties and Seventies. That was to do with stability, a concept unknown in twenty-first century education in England and Wales.

At the start of my career, much educational thinking within the Primary sector, where I was working, was based on The Plowden Report, Children and their Primary Schools, a 1967 review of primary education under the chairmanship of Bridget Plowden.

Positing that “At the heart of the educational process lies the child”, the Plowden Report emphasised the need to view children as individuals. “Individual differences between children of the same age are so great that any class, however homogeneous it seems, must always be treated as a body of children needing individual and different attention.” It encouraged a reduction in transmission teaching of whole classes, more group and individual work, and children being given the opportunity to be experimental and drive their own learning experiences. This, of course, was reliant upon pupils having the requisite skills to engage in discovery learning, or to move on to the next stage.

One important aspect of the Report’s findings was the emphasis it placed on training in oracy skills. In the Seventies, Joan Tough took up the challenge with a series of publications on children’s “talk” and a system for encouraging and developing it. And as the Eighties dawned, creativity in education began to take a back seat, triggered by Callaghan’s Great Debate on education, an occurrence, we are told, that was neither great, nor a debate.

Sir Keith Joseph’s North of England speech in 1984 called for a curriculum that was relevant, broad, balanced and differentiated, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Soon came the National Curriculum. Those of us who were then in our heyday will never forget the huge collection of double punched ring binders that heralded its much vaunted arrival.

They were the days when you no longer had time to go to the gym, but that was alright, because carrying all the files around was a good substitute for weight training. And so it has continued, initiative on top of initiative, for the last twenty-five years.

In 1995, Sir Ron Dearing declared a five year moratorium on educational change, to give the new system time to embed.

Young teachers thought this might be an auspicious time to start or extend their families. Then what happened?

In 1997 we had a General Election and the new, New Labour Government ignored what had been proposed – and why does that as a strategy sound so familiar? – and pushed ahead, first with the Literacy Strategy and then the Daily Maths Hour.

Successive changes have concentrated not on HOW we teach, but WHAT we teach, until now there is something of a resurgence in the ideas enshrined in Plowden. Colin Richards asserts:

“When politicians realise that what is measurable is not all that is valuable, when teachers begin to notice that children learn nothing by being tested, when parents are sick of their young children suffering from exam-induced stress, when the public begins to realise that the results of national tests can always be manipulated to achieve politicians targets, and when decent people decide to stand up against the name-and-shame culture of failure, then someone, somewhere, is going to remember that, ‘at the heart of the educational process lies the child.’”

Conference, that time is now, and the agents of change must be ourselves.

At this year’s Young Teachers’ Conference, a vibrant and stimulating weekend held at Stoke Rochford Hall, and based round the theme of “Supporting Teachers, Reclaiming Education”, the keynote speaker was Councillor Peter Downes, a former President of the Secondary Heads Association, now ASCL.

He spoke powerfully about “Finding your way through the changing education landscape” and pointed out that local democratic accountability for education is under the greatest threat since the end of the nineteenth century, a state of affairs that led to the setting up of County Councils in 1902, to assist in the regulation of education.

When we look at the current disarray and disparity in how schools and academies are run and funded, we cannot help but agree.

When I was nominated, in 2009, to run as prospective Vice Presidential candidate, I campaigned using the strap line “Value teachers – protect education”. My election pledges included:

WORKING TO

·  DEFEND jobs, pay and pensions;

·  PROMOTE high quality education for all;

·  PROTECT our professionalism;

·  REPRESENT all members:

AND TO SECURE:

·  WORKPLACES free from discrimination and bullying;

·  FREEDOM from unwarranted lesson observations;

·  PROTECTED national conditions of service;

·  A WORKING LIFE with realistic, not excessive, workload;

·  SAFE, HEALTHY school environments;

·  PUPILS being taught by qualified teachers.

At that time, the recession was just beginning to take hold, but no-one could have predicted the swift sea change with regard to education that followed the General Election in 2010, and which keeps on coming, at an unprecedented rate.

Now, even more than in 2009, we need to be vigilant and united, maintaining the struggle to defend the educational structures and systems that we believe in.

Sadly, we have to expect three more years of this Coalition Government. I am confident that our Union will do all in its power to protect the profession from the threats to our pensions, pay conditions and terms.

Teachers deserve a properly valued and rewarded profession which plays a critical part in ensuring high standards for students.

In 1853, in The Stones of Venice, John Ruskin wrote:

“You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both.

“Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul’s force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last – a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in the world is concerned...”