NUT School Representatives and Their Role

NUT School Representatives and their Role

A report by the Labour Research Department

May 2003

1

NUT School Representatives and their Role

Executive Summary

• The key issue members come to school representatives about is teacher workloads, and the increase in workloads has severely impacted on the role of the school representative;

• School representatives see communication, representation of members, and advice and support as being their most important roles, with recruitment being seen as less important. School representatives taking part in focus group meetings often described themselves as “acting as a bridge between members and the union”;

• Most school representatives opened school representative’s mailings and put items on the notice board. But a far lower proportion of representatives do more than this, largely due to lack of time;

• Only 12 per cent of school representatives in the survey attend local associations frequently, and more than half (55 per cent) say they never do;

• Only 7 per cent of respondents in the survey got any facility time to carry out their trade union activities, and this decreased to only 4 per cent of primary school representatives. A quarter of these representatives did not know how much facility time they were entitled to;

• Around half of school representatives in the survey made frequent use of The Teacher magazine, and 39 per cent of NUT News. About two-thirds of school representatives use or use frequently use the training brochures, posters and other information provided by the union, while about two-thirds use or frequently use the NUT website. With regard to the website, the focus groups suggested that this was due to lack of time, and because they found the website too slow for their needs;

• Only 4 per cent of school representatives in the survey used the regional office frequently, 11 per cent used the local association frequently and 5 per cent used their division frequently. Findings from the focus group meetings suggest that more resources could be put into local, divisional and regional offices to provide advice and support to school representatives;

• While the quality of NUT training was judged to be high, there is a problem with representatives accessing training. The survey found that only one in five school representatives had attended the NUT school representatives training course in Stoke Rochford, compared with around a third who had attended local training. Participants in the focus groups wanted to see more short local training sessions to complement the training offered at the National Centre.

1. Introduction and methodology

In September 2002, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) commissioned the Labour Research Department (LRD) to carry out a piece of research work in order to find out more about NUT school representatives and their role, and their views about the services they receive from the union. They were also asked about the factors which influenced them to take on the role and their views on its future development.

The purpose of the survey is to improve the support the union gives to its school representatives.

The research was undertaken using a combination of two methods:

• A postal survey using a questionnaire to provide a statistically reliable picture of the activities and attitudes of NUT school representatives; and

• A number of focus group meetings to explore in particular the reasons for the behaviour and attitudes of school representatives.

These two elements of the research are set out in greater detail below.

The postal survey

We considered that a representative survey was the best method of establishing both the activities and attitudes of school representatives as a whole. A sample size of 1,000 was aimed for so that in terms of composition, the sample would be sufficiently representative of the total population of school representatives.

The postal survey was carried out using a four-stage process.

A pilot survey was initially carried out using 100 randomly selected representatives. The pilot was used to find out the likely response rate and to test the questionnaire. In contrast to the final questionnaire many more of the questions here were open-ended so that we could see which choices would be appropriate for the tick-box questions in the final questionnaire.

After the pilot survey had been evaluated, the questionnaire was redrafted, and sent to the NUT school representative at 3,000 schools, randomly selected from the NUT membership database containing 29,295 records.

A copy of the questionnaire used in the survey is provided in Appendix A.

The questionnaire was accompanied by a Freepost envelope to make it easier for representatives to reply. Each questionnaire was coded to allow the responses to be tracked, although anonymity in the final analysis was guaranteed.

A three week period was allowed for the return of the questionnaire and towards the end of this period a reminder letter was sent to those who had not responded up to that point.

Around ten days after the closing date a final letter was sent with a replacement questionnaire to those who had still not responded, reminding the participants of the importance of the project and asking them to complete the questionnaire.

We used an external agency, which we have used for a number of other surveys, to undertake the data-capture of the material input in the final questionnaire. Analysis of the data, including cross-tabulations, was undertaken in house.

Focus group meetings

To complement the postal survey we organised a number of focus group meetings across the country. The focus groups covered the same issues as those examined in the survey. However, the aim was to explore the background to these issues and allow a better explanation as to why the results came out as they did.

Focus groups have been preferred over individual interviews, either face-face or over the telephone, as they allow a group dynamic to develop.

Four focus group meetings were held across the country in three NUT regions: London (East and West), Midlands, and Northern and in Wales. The aim was to have meetings of about eight school representatives on each occasion, reflecting the typical range of representatives in the area.

Each region put forward representatives to be invited to participate in the focus group and a copy of the invitation letter is provided at Appendix B. The meetings lasted around 90 minutes and were held at the NUT regional office (head office in the case of the London focus group) after school with some light refreshments and the travelling expenses of the participants paid by the LRD.

In each case the focus group facilitator was the LRD researcher carrying out the project.

2. Postal Survey Response Rate and Profile of Respondents

The results of the postal questionnaire survey are based on the responses of 823 representatives, although not all the respondents answered all of the questions. In addition to the 823 useable responses, 38 replies indicated that there was no NUT representative at the school and 3 responses indicated that the school had closed down. Including these, the response rate was 29 per cent. A further 50 questionnaires were returned so far after the deadline that we were unable to use them.

Table 1 below provides a breakdown of responses by region:

Seventy percent of respondents were women, compared with 76 per cent of NUT membership as a whole. Their average age was 46.

For primary school representatives, 80 per cent were women and their average age was 45.

For secondary school representatives, 56 per cent were men and their average age was 45.

The average length of time served as a NUT school representative was 8 years and the average length of time served in teaching was 20 years, for both primary and secondary schools.

Table 2 provides a breakdown of responses by the type of school:

The average number of pupils in the schools where the responses came from was 298 and the average number of teachers at the schools was 24. The average number of NUT members was 9.

Table 3 below provides a comparison of numbers of pupils, teachers and NUT members in primary and secondary schools, which shows that a higher proportion of primary school teachers are NUT members than in secondary schools.

Table 4 provides information about other unions present at the schools:

3. Focus Group Participants

A series of four focus groups was held in three regions of the union and in Wales during March, April and May 2003. There were five participants at the Northern Region meeting in Chester-le-Street, two at the London Region meeting in central London, three at the Wales meeting in Cardiff, and two at the Midlands Region meeting in Stafford.

The meetings were all held at the NUT regional or Wales office, with the exception of the London Region meeting, which was held at the NUT head office.

It had been hoped to have around eight participants at each meeting, but it proved very difficult to find willing participants. Only around 16 per cent of those invited attended the focus group meetings (three out of 12 in Wales, two out of eighteen in London, five out of seventeen in the Northern Region and two out of 28 in the Midlands Region).

The meetings were all held at 4.30pm to 6pm, as it was thought by regional office staff that this would be the best time for teachers to attend a meeting, giving them time to travel to the meeting after school.

A number of reasons were given for school representatives not being able to attend the meeting, which included attending parents' evenings, governors' meetings, training at school, not being able to travel to the venue, and workload issues.

As stated above, the aim of the focus groups was to explore the background to these issues and allow a better explanation as to why the results came out as they did. They were organised in order to provide some qualitative information. Particularly because of the small number of representatives as a whole, the results of the focus groups should not be interpreted as being necessarily representative of views within the union as a whole.

Table 5 provides a profile of the focus group meeting participants:

4. Detailed Results of the Research

The role of school representatives

Key areas

Respondents in the survey were asked to select from a list the key areas they dealt with as school representatives, and could identify as many as they wished.

The survey found that workload is a key issue for school representatives. Almost half of respondents (49 per cent) said that this was a key area that they dealt with, and performance management was the next highest, with almost a third of respondents (32 per cent) reporting this as a key area of their work. More than a quarter of representatives saw student/teacher incidents (28 per cent) as a key area, and 16 per cent indicated that the issue of cover was a key area for them to deal with.

There were differences in the responses between primary and secondary level. Although workload was the key area dealt with by school representatives in the survey, this was less so for representatives at primary schools, 47 per cent, compared with 62 per cent of secondary school representatives. Student/teacher incidents were the next highest for secondary schools, cited by 52 per cent of school representatives, compared with only 20 per cent of primary school representatives.

Performance management was more of an issue at secondary (44 per cent) than primary level (30 per cent) as was the issue of cover, 39 per cent at secondary compared with 9 per cent at primary schools. In primary schools, cover is less of an issue as primary school teachers do not generally have non-contact teaching time during the school day.

A full breakdown of responses by primary and secondary schools is provided in table 6 below.

Table 6 shows the key areas school representatives deal with:

An analysis of the results by region showed that the issue of workload was highest in London East, and pay was more of an issue in London (East and West) and Wales, than in other regions. Performance management was more of an issue in Yorkshire, than in other regions, and student/teacher incidents were more of an issue in Wales and the South West.

A full breakdown of responses by region is provided in table 7. The abbreviations used are as follows: N - Northern, NW - North West, Y - Yorkshire, M - Midlands, E - Eastern, SE - South East, Wa - Wales, LE - London East, LW - London West, SW - South West.

Table 7 provides a breakdown of key areas of work for school representatives by region

In the focus group meetings, older school representatives felt that workloads had increased immeasurably since they had started teaching, and felt that new teachers and new representatives accepted the current levels of work more readily, because they had not worked during a period where workloads were not so high.

In relation to workload, the issue of standard assessment tests (SATs) came up at a number of the focus groups, with representatives reporting that there was a strong and growing opposition to the regime of testing and narrowing of the curriculum, particularly in relation to Year 2 and Year 6 SATs in primary schools, but also in relation to the increasing amount of testing in secondary schools.

Participants at one focus group complained about the extent of testing throughout schools, and cited the use of baseline tests being used to predict the performance of children, including MidYIS (middle years information system) and Yellis (Year eleven information system), developed at the University of Durham, as contributing to the problem.

Performance management, where it had come up as a problem for focus group participants, was in relation to targets being used to reflect the targets of the senior management team, such as improving children's performance levels.

Student/teacher incidents (and parent/teacher incidents) were reported by both primary and secondary school representatives in the focus groups, and were described as something which could take up a lot of time for representatives. This would typically involve the representative calling the member from home to find out exactly what had happened, accompanying the member into meetings with the head, or another senior teacher, and offering advice and support throughout this process.

With regard to pay, school representatives in the focus groups reported that although pay is mainly negotiated at national level, the issue of threshold is something that members come to school representatives about, particularly in primary schools. They may also be involved in local negotiations concerning where members should be within the pay spine.

In addition, although they were not directly involved in negotiating pay, some reported that members were unhappy with the latest pay award, and were aware of national teacher shortages and therefore supportive of the industrial action being taken in London over pay.

The issue of cover was raised as an issue in all the focus group meetings by secondary school representatives as a result of absenteeism, posts not being filled, not enough supply teachers being brought in, schools not sticking to agreements on cover and covers not being recorded properly.

What do school representatives do?

The results of the survey show that school representatives see communication, representation of members, and advice and support as being their most important roles. On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 was unimportant and 5 was very important, the average ranking for these areas was 4.2, compared with 3.6 for negotiation and 3 for recruitment and retention.

Fifty seven percent of school representatives in the survey saw representation of members as being very important, compared with 52 per cent who said that giving advice or support was very important, and 51 per cent who said that communication was very important. Negotiation was seen as very important by 29 per cent of school representatives in the survey, and 22 per cent saw recruitment and retention as a very important part of their role. A minority of respondents, 2 per cent, gave details of other areas where they had an important role.