GENERAL SECRETARY’S SPEECH – CONFERENCE 2006
1.
President, I want to congratulate you on your address on Saturday morning and
to express my appreciation for the way in which you have conducted debates.
2.
I know your Mum has been with you at Conference she is very proud of you and
so too are we.
3.
Conference, we should be proud too of the achievements of the Union. In all
aspects of our work, we’re moving forward.
4.
Our policies are not just policies – they are progressive, effective equal
opportunity National Union of Teachers’ policies.
5.
Our principles are not just principles - they are sound and clear, deeply held
absolutely correct NUT principles.
6.
Our associations are not just associations – they are hard working, campaign
leading, education defending, comprehensive school promoting, and academy
opposing NUT associations.
7.
And Conference increasingly, teachers, members of the NUT, are turning to their
union for their professional development.
8.
Conference, to make this point, we’ve prepared something to watch.
VIDEO APPEARS HERE
9.
Conference, that gives a flavour of what we’re about.
10.
Professional development is what teachers and members want - it’s union work.
11.
Professional development is integral to the range of services and activities we
provide.
As a professional association and trade union, our work would be
incomplete without it.
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12.
Thousands of teachers have taken part in the programme over the last six years.
More and more are recognising the role of the NUT in providing the best training
and professional development.
13.
And our CPD prospectus is going to grow.
14.
The Executive has agreed to increase our investment in professional
development
and
we
will
establish
the
Union’s
own
institute
of
professional learning.
15.
We are: a learning union.
16.
Conference, we are establishing a partnership between the largest teachers’
organisation, the NUT and the University of Cambridge - Faculty of Education.
17.
The new partnership will be launched on 9 June 2006.
It’ll involve John
MacBeath and colleagues from Cambridge. We want to pack Mander Hall that
day.
18.
Professional development is opening up our Union to members who previously
have had little engagement in our work.
By becoming centre stage in their
professional development, we take a prime position in their working lives.
19.
And we’re doing this in other ways: reaching the parts others cannot reach.
20.
The number of teachers who have been on our ICT courses will soon pass the
11,000 mark. For many of them, our courses were their first experience of an
NUT activity.
21.
For some of our union learning representatives, holding office within the Union
and getting information, advice and guidance to colleagues is a new and
enriching experience.
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22.
Significant numbers of local officers have already been introduced to our new
interactive web-based support network, HEARTH.
23.
The NUT was the only teachers’ organisation to win funding from the Department
of Trade and Industry’s Union Modernisation Fund.
24.
The development of Hearth will be accelerated through this additional funding.
25.
Our international development work is progressing at national level and in
divisions, associations and schools. Yet again, the NUT was the only teachers’
organisation
to
obtain
funding
from
the
Department
for
International
Development. We’ve organised courses - all oversubscribed. These activities,
again, are often giving members their first experience of union work, often young
and black.
26.
Through our website facility, thousands have sent their messages online to their
MPs. Thousands more posted the letters we provided.
27.
Our ability to lobby and make an impact on MPs has been greatly enhanced.
28.
The Union is moving forward.
29.
Conference, over the last 12 months, local officers and school representatives
have been engaged in a major exercise seeking to protect our members from the
damage inflicted by the movement from management allowances to TLRs.
30.
I want to thank you and other local officers and school representatives for the
hard work, the energy and the hours and miles of travel to safeguard the interests
of teachers. We’ve achieved real successes. I think you’re smashing.
31.
We’ve been determined and resolute.
32.
President, we’ve adapted our approaches and our negotiating skills to fit an
infinite range of situations and sensitivities.
We’ve sought to minimise the
potential damage to the careers of teachers.
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33.
We didn’t seek these changes.
34.
We didn’t support these changes.
35.
Those who were behind them were determined that they be implemented.
36.
We’ve had significant successes in our campaign, demonstrating the strength,
courage and resolve of the NUT at all levels.
37.
A consequence of our work is that we have a stronger base of local officers, with
more resources, better support, and greater internal unity than we have had for
decades.
38.
Let there be no doubt, we need this strength and this sense of purpose.
39.
Conference, it’s in the nature of things that teachers live and work for the future.
They’re the critical link between the generations. Teachers must look ahead; the
maturity of those they teach comes to fruition in time future, not time past.
40.
As teachers must, so must their union.
41.
But it’s not easy.
For we are faced with those whose knowledge and
understanding of the history of education is so inadequate that they put forward
proposals in the name of modernisation which are in fact reactionary.
42.
The marketisation of education will damage the educational opportunities of
children from the toughest areas.
43.
Conference, that’s why we’ve been campaigning so vigorously on the White
Paper and now the Education and Inspections Bill. That’s why we are seeking
amendments to lessen its damaging impact.
44.
And we’ve been effective in reaching out to the educational community. Our
ability to form alliances with parents and governors, campaign organisations and
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students, was clearly demonstrated at the joint conference, A Good Local School
for Every Child on 25 March.
45.
Taking educational opportunities forward is the natural role of the NUT. It is:

at the centre of the debate about the future of education;

not fettered;

not confined;

not constrained by other factors from supporting what we believe in; and

campaigning against what we oppose.
46.
No one at the DfES vetted my speech before I came to this stand.
47.
We’re independent.
48.
We listen to others.
49.
We respect all opinions.
50.
But it’s our clear duty to make our views known throughout the profession and
throughout the country.
51.
You’d expect this ethos from our Union with its history and its passionate
commitment to the achievement of a system which meets and fulfils the potential
of all our youngsters.
52.
We have a powerful vision for the future of schools in their communities. Schools
have an enormous potential, not only to make a difference to young people’s
lives but also to give life to communities; increase social capital; sustain their
economic life; and generate self respect.
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53.
It’s that link between communities and schools which the Government through its
Education and Inspections Bill completely fails to reflect and understand.
54.
The Prime Ministers’ vision is one of trusts; of boutiques of schools, ever
changing in size, shape and identity. It involves outside companies dipping in
and maybe out of the governance of schools.
55.
Indeed, it’s worth reflecting on the absurdity of the Government’s Trust School
proposals.
56.
Head teachers will spend their time servicing not one but two governing bodies.
The main governing body, dominated by a majority of Trust appointed governors,
will have its own demands.
And it’s worth speculating on the potential
consequences.
57.
Banned from selling fizzy drinks and sweets in vending machines, fast food
companies might return through the back door as trust sponsors and governors.
Perhaps they’ll want to alter the science or design and technology curriculum to
highlight the science of food processing and marketing.
58.
Or there could be debates about how school uniforms could reflect each trust’s
interests.
59.
The corporate colours of the sponsors would be all pervading - orange and
brown, Fanta and Pepsi uniforms. I find it hard to imagine one designed by Irn
Bru.
60.
Indeed, I see a real opening for school uniform manufacturers becoming trust
sponsors. What a boost for business! Changing school uniforms every year like
Manchester United’s away kit.
61.
But there is to be not one but two bodies of governance. Head teachers will have
to relate to legally constituted Parents’ Councils serviced by the schools.
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62.
Head teachers and their staffs will need to be experts in conflict resolution
between Parents’ Councils and Trust school governing bodies.
63.
Head teachers will spend vital hours in triangulating the demands of the trust
sponsors; the demands of Parents’ Councils; and their day jobs of simply getting
on with running their schools and knowing the needs and names of the children
they teach.
64.
Conference, head teachers and staff would be mad to contemplate trust status.
It’s obvious that the more time head teachers and their staffs spend servicing
Parents Councils and meeting the peculiar demands of trust sponsors, the less
time they’ll have to teach, prepare and assess.
65.
We have heard a lot about scandals in the past couple of weeks. But I believe the
real scandal is not the possible sale of Honours. It is the selling of the curriculum
and of the education of our children to those who want to impose what may be
narrow and prejudiced views that are outside the mainstream.
66.
On the other hand, there are the local authorities; shorn of the ability to run
services; to connect with schools; to bring teachers together from different
schools to share ideas about teaching. Local authorities are to be turned into
lean, mean fighting machines.
67.
The Government has a vision of local authorities parachuting into schools with
virtually no notice and armed with letters of concern: OFSTED’s territorial army.
68.
Conference, on top of this we have the spin and hype about selection, not only
from this Government but also from the Conservatives.
69.
Conference, there are those who seek to make learned and academic distinction
between aptitude and ability. Such arguments are designed simply to make the
unacceptable acceptable by calling it another name.
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70.
For the House of Commons Education Select Committee this was obvious and
that’s why it wanted to abolish selection by aptitude. For the Conservatives, the
retention of selection by aptitude represents a golden opportunity.
71.
Conference, the phrase “direction of travel” has been used a lot lately. But it’s a
good phrase to describe the gate opened by the Prime Minister to the
Conservatives.
72.
The Conservative Party ahead of its policy review supports selection by aptitude
and ability. They’ve said that the 10 per cent cap on such selection is not set in
stone. Their policy review may lift that cap.
73.
Conference, the Conservative Party’s approach is a neat two-hander.
Their
policy review may turn out to be a smoke screen for the reintroduction of
selection and a school’s freedom to do it.
74.
A combination of the Conservative Party’s latent intentions and the Government’s
failure to fully abolish selection could lead to a revitalised selection system in the
future.
75.
Selection leads to social and ethnic segregation.
76.
Selection undermines our country’s capacity to run an education system which
meets all its youngsters’ needs.
77.
Conference, the debate on selection in which the country has been involved has
produced the moment for full abolition. The opportunity is now.
78.
President, I urge Parliament to abolish pupil selection in all its forms now.
79.
Abolish selection by aptitude.
80.
Abolish selection by ability.
81.
Get rid of it now. No school’s existence will be threatened by such an action.
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82.
We make no apology for campaigning to preserve and develop comprehensive
education.
83.
We make no apology for resisting the expansion of selection.
84.
We make no apology for calling for the end of selection.
85.
We make no apology for defending free, comprehensive education, for which
there is an accountability to elected representatives at local level. A good local
school for every child!
86.
We make no apology for insisting that only within the public sector will the
education of our children be safe and secure.
87.
The interests of the private sector, at the end of the day, are not altruistic. British
Aerospace, after receiving billions of pounds of Government support to develop
the Airbus, now turns its back on the manufacture of passenger aircraft in the UK.
It walks away.
88.
We cannot afford to trust the private sector which, today invests in education and
walks away tomorrow. Our children are too precious. Their education is too
important.
89.
Conference, the Government’s vision encourages fragmentation, segregation and
democratic deficit.
90.
It does nothing about enhancing our communities’ commitment to education.
91.
It does nothing for equality of opportunity.
92.
I cannot believe that a chaotic admissions system and self-governing
independent status tackles the needs of ghettoised communities.
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93.
I cannot believe that such a system could enhance the learning opportunities of
the lesbian or gay student, the youngster with a disability or the girl or boy that
lacks self-confidence.
94.
We need a far better vision than that; one which is about Every Child Matters and
Every Community Matters; rather than about Every Trust Matters or Every
Academy Matters.
95.
We’ll continue to be at the heart of the campaign to reject the structural proposals
in the Bill.
96.
Conference has asked the National Union to step up the campaign against the
Prime Minister’s education vision the Union will respond to that demand. Let me
emphasise the National Union of Teachers will campaign alongside parents and
governors against the establishment of trusts.
97.
If the Prime Minister is so sure his ideas are popular with parents let them
choose, let them have a say in a ballot.
98.
And we’ll need to be vigilant in Wales.
99.
Wales is not immune to the tender mercies of the Education Bill. A section in the
Bill opens up the possibility of a future Welsh Assembly Government creating
Trust Schools, Academies and introducing selection and all the other goodies
from across Offa’s Dyke. Such a move would only need a change in political
control in the Welsh Assembly Government.
100.
Conference, shortly there’ll be a new Prime Minister. The Government and the
Labour Party face the pain of transition. It’ll be no less painful than when Dr Who
changes shape.
101.
The decision on who should be the next leader is for others.
102.
But I’ll say this.
From our stand point as a trade union not affiliated to any
political party, we can see a very real turbulence of ideas.
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awareness from all Parliamentary parties that this country is part of a global
family.
103.
When members of that family face a crisis - famine, disaster, or conflict - other
countries can’t just stand on the sidelines. We can’t just watch and do nothing.
104.
We certainly don’t stand by while youngsters across the world struggle to get on
the education ladder.
105.
David Cameron’s policy review is addressing these issues. So too will MenziesCampbell.
106.
But Gordon Brown is taking the lead.
With other finance Ministers, he’s
committed our country to back an initiative by Nelson Mandela, to fund new tenyear plans to meet the Millennium Development Goal of education for every child
by 2015.
107.
But Gordon Brown wants to move faster by achieving universal schooling ahead
of 2015. Secondly, he wants free schooling for every child. Both aspirations go
beyond Gleneagles.
108.
Conference we asked for this. It is fantastic news, especially for the children. It
showed those of us who last summer were in Hyde Park or Edinburgh, or at our
National Education Conference, backing ‘MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY’ that we
can make a difference. And I’ve got a little more good news.
109.
Some weeks ago when Christine and I were with Ronnie Smith, our friend the
General Secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, there was a call on my
mobile from Chancellor Gordon Brown.
110.
He told me that on the 10th of April, with President Nelson Mandela and Hilary
Benn, the Secretary of State for International Development, he’d launch a
campaign with the aim of providing education for every child worldwide.
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111.
The Chancellor intended to turn promises on education into reality, school by
school, class by class and child by child.
112.
He was going to announce that the UK was taking the lead by increasing its
share in the funding of education in poor countries across the world.
113.
There’d be specific funding to help African and other developing countries with 10
year education plans. He asked us to encourage schools, teachers and pupils to
get fully involved, to be vigilant and hold politicians to their promises.
114.
Our union and the EIS are up to the task. We have sent a special bulletin to all
schools and a letter from Gordon Brown himself. Copies will be distributed as
you leave Conference.
115.
Conference, we should be proud that the Chancellor chose us to convey this
message. It’s a recognition of our work and our commitment.
116.
Gordon Brown’s budget speech and his call to us, demonstrated a genuine
commitment to education The Chancellor was refreshing in telling us that too little
of our country’s income and wealth are spent on state education.
117.
He told us that the government had new aspirations for all children to have the
benefits of independent school resource levels. Small class and group sizes for
all. Pupil teacher ratios of 9:1 not 16:1; expenditure of £8 000 per pupil not £5
000.
118.
Conference we will hold him to account for these commitments in what ever
capacity he serves in the future.
119.
We will create the Gordon Brown Index to measure his success or otherwise.
We will publish the Gordon Brown Index report annually.
120.
Conference, within a few years then, we are likely to have a Government that is
not only new but one with a new commitment to education.
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121.
122.
123.
We’ll respond to a new government’s proposals for education:

positively;

professionally;

critically; and

without fear or favour. As an independent union should.
We’re committed to:

working with a Government on areas where we agree; and

trying to change the Government’s mind where we disagree.
The Education Bill triggered a debate on the future of education which the current
Government had neither sought nor anticipated.
124.
But we were well prepared. We had a radical and coherent alternative to the Bill.
Our idea in ‘Bringing Down the Barriers’, of a good local school for every child
captures the imagination. It’s in sharp contrast with the pessimism and poverty of
vision contained in the phrase, self-governing independent schools.
125.
As an outward looking organisation, we want our ideas to be shared and used.
126.
The idea of a good local school for every child was adopted by the organisations
running the 25 March conference.
After that conference, a number of head
teachers used the same slogan when advertising a meeting about the future of
comprehensive education.
127.
That’s the kind of partnership that the NUT is interested in. And it’s that which
has run like a thread through our conference here in Torquay. We’ve asked
ourselves how do we promote the learning needs of youngsters? How do we
promote teachers’ professionalism? These questions are at the centre of what
we do.
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128.
In this country we have the bizarre spectacle of our young people rightly
celebrating their success while the grumpy old men and women, the detractors of
comprehensive education, complain and grumble. Miserable…
129.
The success of our youngsters and the achievements of their teachers doesn’t
suit their argument.
130.
Despite their denigration, the achievements of youngsters in schools, particularly
those serving the toughest areas, has been fantastic. And that’s due to the hard
work and passionate commitment of teachers.
And that’s what we should
celebrate alongside them and their families.
131.
The successes of our youngsters has come about as a result of teachers’ own
learning and knowledge.
132.
When we debated special education; pupil behaviour; play; and indeed the
Education and Inspections Bill, we showed that there is no distinction between
our commitment to our young people and our commitment to the professionalism
of teachers.
133.
But the Government’s commitment to enhancing teachers’ learning has been
patchy. Its own professional development strategy ran into the sand some three
years ago.
134.
Teachers have been given no dedicated resources for learning entitlements.
Teachers have no guaranteed entitlement during the school day to professional
development.
135.
Which brings me to the future of the teaching profession. How do we value
teachers?
136.
There’s no big-picture thinking about the future of the teaching profession in the
21st Century. The approach of the DfES has been about calibrating the current
TLR system to the current main and upper scale.
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137.
From this exercise there is precious little benefit for school communities and
teachers. The whole thing has been a mess.
138.
Conference, we’ll continue to protect and defend our members facing a halt in
their careers, status and salaries as we’ve been doing during the whole sorry
TLR story.
139.
We have a bizarre pay structure where teachers are divided into sheep and
goats.
140.
On the one hand, we have classroom teachers; on the other, we have the
leadership group and the holders of TLRs.
141.
I’m not going to say which are the sheep or which are the goats, but the teaching
profession deserves better than that. Our youngsters deserve better than that.
142.
The pay structure, as it is developing, is forcing teachers to make the choice
between two diverging career paths.
143.
Conference that’s not right.
144.
We should have a pay structure which enhances rather than limits the
professionalism of teachers.
We should have a structure which encourages
teachers rather than one that puts up hurdles and barriers against their
aspirations. We should have a structure that opens up opportunity rather than
limits numbers of promoted posts.
145.
Conference, it’s crystal clear that our pay and conditions structure needs a radical
overhaul. One in which the NUT is included, not excluded.
146.
Conference, you recently agreed a motion on teaching in the 21st Century, that
looked forward to a new autonomy and status for the teaching profession. We
need to build on that.
Our ideas for a new professionalism must examine
whether the current system properly and efficiently rewards teachers and
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enhances their work and confidence. We’ll need to turn to that issue before next
Conference.
147.
Working closely with colleagues across the public sector, we’ve been at the
forefront of the campaign to protect public service pensions.
148.
The NUT succeeded in protecting all current members of the teachers’ scheme.
149.
We are striving to achieve a top quality scheme for future generations of
teachers. I think we will be successful.
150.
We campaign to protect the Local Government Pension Scheme, working closely
with colleagues in Unison and the local government unions generally.
151.
Working together we have been winning together.
152.
And Conference, we have made important progress on pupil behaviour and
discipline in schools. Our Charter for schools has been very well received. It has
become the basis of the behaviour policies in schools throughout the country.
153.
It great influence on the Alan Steer Report. It led to the acceptance by the
Government that teachers needed legal entitlements.
154.
We believe that national testing, oversized classes, excessive teacher-workload
and inadequate investment in the fabric of schools are all harmful to teaching,
learning and proper standards of behaviour.
155.
It’s good for schools, teachers, parents and pupils that the NUT is at the focus of
the debate on school behaviour.
156.
Working with parents is at the heart of the Charter on Behaviour and all those
concerned with education will recognise the strength of our position in saying
that:

every child is entitled to education, including those who present problems;
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
no teacher or child should fear going to school;

no child or teacher should face or accept physical or verbal abuse;

no teacher should be expected to teach or child to learn in the face of
disruption, whether sporadic or persistent and low level.
157.
President I have said that we believe that personalised learning could play a
significant role in promoting good behaviour and discipline that is conducive to
teaching and learning.
158.
Conference, much has been written about personalised learning. Much of it is
vague. Some of it is simply wrong.
159.
Personalised learning is not about skewing resources towards Year 6 children at
Level 3, so that they can achieve Level 4 for the benefits of targets.
160.
It’s not about outsourcing tuition arrangements to private providers or substituting
teachers with computers.
161.
But the Union would be wrong to dismiss personalised learning as spin.
162.
Our ideas were set out in our education strategy ‘Bringing Down the Barriers’.
163.
They are a million miles away from a choice and market inspired agenda.
164.
They’re about:

making a difference to young people’s lives;

giving a guaranteed entitlement for all young people to personal tuition
from qualified teachers even if their parents can’t afford it;

giving to schools the ability to create small group and class sizes;
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
giving a guaranteed entitlement to experiences outside the classroom,
including cultural, sporting and artistic activities;
165.

foreign visits; and

residential activities.
These are the things that enrich children’s lives and help them to make the most
of their educational opportunities.
166.
And that’s why, irrespective of Ruth Kelly’s exclusion of the NUT from the
Government’s Personalised Learning Working Group, we’ll continue to argue for
our ideas.
167.
I’m not going to let her get away with the stupidity of excluding us. Our Union’s
ideas are far stronger than that.
168.
I could say much about our exclusion. But I will bite my tongue. Let me say this
again to the Secretary of State: We welcome the inclusion of the Transport and
General Workers’ Union, the General Municipal and Boiler Makers’ Union on the
Working Party.
Together with UNISON, they represent support staff but to
exclude the NUT and the NAHT from its work is foolish. Any conclusions the
group reaches lacks credibility
169.
President, from time to time I’m asked for my reflections on progress, or lack of it,
towards professional unity.
170.
I think historically we are moving towards it.
171.
The leaders of other unions are keen to tell the media that they have no interest
in mergers or amalgamations. A General Secretary, who I like, suggests that we
are campaigning for professional unity because we have little else to do.
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172.
In a comradely way, I have to say to my fellow General Secretaries, “thank you
very much but we are up to our eyes in defending teachers against pay cuts, the
profession against the erosion of professional status, children against moves to
remove from them their proper entitlement to be taught by qualified teachers and
schools from being plunged into the maelstrom of privatisation and competition in
an education marketplace”.
173.
That’s quite enough to be getting on with.
174.
No-one will knock me out of my stride in arguing for Professional Unity. It goes to
the very soul of our trade unionism and the commonsense of teachers.
175.
The unity we want would come from a single organisation that would speak for all
teachers, in all schools, at all age groups and in all sectors.
176.
It would be a single union which would speak its mind for teachers with neither
fear nor favour.
177.
It would be proud and independent.
178.
It would align itself with no Government; no single politician with high aspirations
and with no political party.
179.
Conference, my point is that the teachers’ organisations now need to move on –
move forward. As we’re doing in the NUT. Let’s replace the old ways of doing
things and replace them with a new era of inclusion, a generosity of spirit that we
see between friends and professionals in our best schools. Then, the whole
edifice of competition and dispute between us would collapse.
180.
President, our commitment to Professional Unity does not diminish our duty to be
a recruiting union.
181.
At the beginning of Conference we witnessed your presentation of the first
National Union Membership Development award the NUMDA to the Plymouth
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Association for its innovative work in activities likely to lead to the recruitment and
retention of members.
182.
Conference, I’m fully behind this new development. If we believe that this Union
represents the teaching profession, we should use our energies to bring teachers
within its folds.
183.
The NUMDA is setting an example in celebrating membership recruitment
activity. And it’s perfectly compatible with our campaign for professional unity.
184.
Conference, we have had a busy 12 months. Having faced many challenges, the
Union has grown in number, stature and significance.
185.
We are strong and united.
186.
We have moved the Union forward. Working together, we have been winning
together.
187.
We now face even greater challenges – but potentially greater rewards.
188.
And we are up to the task.
189.
And we are up for it.
190.
This is a great, growing, forward looking, proactive union; this is a learning union.
191.
I’m proud to be your General Secretary. I’m proud of my Union.
THE END
Word Count: 4,946
GS SPEECH 2006_AJ
Revised: 17 April 2006/SA
11 April 2006