The last year in focus…

locally & nationally

Bill Greenshields’ 2005/6 Derbyshire Division Secretary & National Executive Report

to the Division AGM, March 2006

 

A

s we enter a new Union year, we are embarking on a great education debate, here in Derbyshire and across the nation. The Government didn’t want the debate, and now that we have made it happen, they seek to say that it is as good as over. But in reality, it’s only just beginning.

 

Our current local media and advertising campaign, letters to Reps, Headteachers, Councillors, MPs, parent organisations, governors etc, coupled with our lobbying and public campaigning have ensured that the debate locally is well and truly underway.

 

It is a debate about absolute fundamentals. Here are 10 questions that demand answers…

 

And another big question… why throughout the year, and for some time before that, has every aspect of school education and the lives of teachers been under threat?

 

The promise of statutory PPA non-contact time for Primary teachers for the first time ever should not perhaps be seen as a threat! But the political intention was clear. By introducing non-contact time and not increasing budgets commensurately, the Government hoped to enforce its “workforce remodelling” agenda, and see the widespread substitution of teaching assistants for qualified teachers. The results have not been as uniform as they would have hoped. Headteachers have been unwilling to rob children of their right to a qualified teacher AND a teaching assistant – though as part of the same agenda, our Supply Teacher colleagues, locally and nationally, report real reductions in work as Cover Supervisors provide a cheap substitute.

 

Both our pay and pensions ( simply “deferred pay”) have been under attack, and the union’s organisation – though stretched –largely met the challenge… though aspects of both struggles continue.

 

The Government, having declared their “work til you drop” pension proposals “non-negotiable” were forced by our campaign and ballot for action to U-turn, and concede “no-change” for all existing members of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. Now at the end of the year, we have balloted our members in the Local Government Pensions Scheme, and they are about to join with colleagues from a range of unions in industrial action. We are confident the result will be just as good.

 

Early in ‘the year’, we were facing employers who were making progression form UPS2 to UPS3 difficult – and then later, we needed to beef up our organisation and willingness to take action over the destructive TLR “individual pay bargaining”/cost cutting attack. Great lessons were learned from these two salary struggles. In the UPS issue we attempted a “sweet reason and individual casework” approach. We won most arguments, had some successful results, but in many cases Governors refused to budge. In the TLR battle, we adopted a determined collective approach – along the lines of “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Largely, members responded well, and supported each other. Where this was so, we made great progress. Where it was not, colleagues lost pay and status. There is a fundamental lesson here for all of us in trade union organisation.

 

The lesson is that we need an organising culture… that is to say we need active, involved members, and strength at school and local level. Our sister teacher unions are not so convinced. They believe that they have to work behind the scenes with Government, trying to reach binding compromise deals, and then selling the results to their own members. This is called the “Social Partnership” model, and is incompatible with a membership led organising culture. Those involved in it, have found themselves defending the policy of teachers being replaced by teaching assistants, of colleagues losing pay through TLR manipulations – and now being unable to properly oppose the Education Bill. This has been a big feature of the year, locally and nationally.

 

Locally we have, over the last two years, taken up the process of developing the organising culture. We have focussed on strengthening our local officer and school rep organisation – using training events as well as membership strategies, and day to day processes. But we have not done enough. The ‘urgent’ has simply overwhelmed the “important”! Casework continues to grow in quantity and complexity – though each year we believe that it can’t get any more demanding! The need to campaign on all fronts has also undermined our intent to focus on the organising culture, and specifically to develop the role, status and support for School Reps. I think that somehow we should make this a priority for the coming Summer Term.

 

Nationally, we will be well supported in this. I helped to establish the Executive’s Organisation Project Team, and also the National Union’s Task Group on local organisation. I have also promoted the development of local training and support through the Executive’s Training Committee, complementary to the Union’s National Training programme. I should report that the National Union staff, while dismayed by the fire at Stoke Rochford, have coped amazingly well, and after just a momentary shudder, the national training programme has not only continued, but continued to grow – particularly in the area of our CPD offer to members, which is involving massive numbers of our members

 

All this work is bearing fruit (quite high up the tree, actually). The clearest manifestation of the renewed commitment to local organisation will be in the form of Hearth, the interactive union website for local association officers and school reps, to “chat”, share experiences and materials, get direct advice and support etc. But there will be many others. The Union is now irrevocably committed to the organising culture. Locally, we have to make sure it works!

 

Key to our success is the work of our Division Learning Reps, and Health & Safety ‘specialists’. These areas of work – again both nationally and locally – have been taken up and appreciated by members in larger numbers than those who attend union meetings and take part in more “traditional” trade union activity. Over 10,100 members have now taken part in the union organised ICT courses nationally for example. That is not to say that the Learning Reps’ and H&S Reps work is a substitute for other union work. Far from it – it introduces members to that work, as well as having its own intrinsic high value. This work is reported elsewhere – but we all owe a big “thank you” to all the colleagues heading this up locally.

 

There are a few areas of work out of a much wider range that we have undertaken that I particularly want to mention.

 

Firstly, pupil behaviour. Wherever we have organised meetings with this as the theme, attendance has been good. The Union nationally has kept the issue at the forefront, and can be thanked in large measure for the establishment and report of the Steer Committee, and for the positive section of the current Education Bill on the rights of teachers as teachers to discipline pupils. This work has been shared between the Union’s Education Department, the Conditions of Service Department, the Legal Department, the Membership & Communications Department, Media and Publicity.. in fact just about our whole organisation. Our recent materials “Learning To Behave” are excellent. Equally, at local level, school managements and the Authority know that the NUT will always follow issues up, and not allow them to swept under the carpet.

 

Secondy, the vexed question of subject ‘responsibility’ in Primary schools. Though I have attempted to avoid naming individual officers in this report, it has to be said that David Furness first picked this up both out of casework and the TLR issues – and has doggedly carried it until we all, locally and nationally, have taken notice. The National Union will as a result be producing advice on the issue of what can be expected of primary colleagues, what should and should not happen in “observation”, where responsibility for “monitoring” and “standards” lie, who should get TLRs, how all this relates to Local Inspections, OFSTED and SEFs etc. This is a great example of the organising culture. Real experiences leading to discussion, proposal, policy, and advice – all to be tested in reality again.

 

Thirdly, the question of reserved places on the National Executive for what are known – patronisingly in my view -  as “the Equalities Groups”. Everyone told us that the issue was closed – that there definitely would be “closed” Executive places, available only to members in particular groups – black teachers, disabled teachers, LGBT teachers for example. We discussed this locally, and came to the conclusion that it would damage both the democracy of the union and the central position in the Union of issues of discrimination. We set about changing the direction of the debate, both at Conference, and in writing to Associations, Divisions, the Executive and the General Secretary. We succeeded in changing the question from HOW the reserved places should be achieved to WHETHER they should be. And in the last survey of Associations and Divisions it was clear that there was very little support for the move – and that more were against it than for it. Again, this demonstrates that, when we depend on members rather than “we-know-best” factions, we get the right result…usually!

 

Fourthly, the National Union has given great emphasis to work on developing union organisation amongst young teachers – who we characterise as any member under 35! We have established a Young Teachers’ Forum, and a Young Teachers’ Conference. I’ve been involved in both as a Committee Officer. I sit in the corner with a mug of tea and slippers and reminisce about the 1970s… it’s a very valuable role. I think we need to take the issues up locally, and find ways of encouraging young teachers to play a role in our local organisation.

 

Fifthly, the Derbyshire Special Needs Review. From a simple “audit” of Special School provision, this has grown into a full blown review, with major consequences for pupils and their families… and of course for teachers in the full range of provision. As I remember it, there had very recently been such a review shortly before I took on the Div Sec job in 1996. Now we are starting the consultation on another one. Again, a Union firmly based amongst its members can make a contribution to such a review that no other organisation can make. The Authority should recognise this, but does not appear to have done so. We need to demonstrate to them, that they would be best talking to us at an early stage across a table, rather than at a late stage through the pages of newspapers.

 

Fifthly, our international work. This is much a part of our work as School Rep development, or putting a submission to the Pay Review Body, or doing casework. We have a very proud and widely respected tradition. The National Union regards us as having very good local practice, arising partly out of a bit of work we did around the vitally important MakePovertyHistory campaign – but mainly because of our work on Cuba. I very much hope that this work will continue. There is a fraternity, or perhaps a sorority,  of teachers around the world. Cuba – as we saw again on our twinning visit this year - represents trade union organised teachers who are well respected, well resourced (as far as is possible under the US blockade) and who are at the centre of their communities. In Ethiopia, trade union organised teachers are feared, persecuted, arrested and killed by the Government. In Columbia, death squads shoot one trade union teacher a week in front of their class. In the Middle East, the General Union of Palestinian Teachers and the Israeli Teachers Union provide hands that reach out to each other across the divide. The Union is involved with all of these – and is making a difference. I very much hope the international work of the union – at least in part – will remain on the DAT agenda.

 

All the day to day work of the union, locally and nationally, goes on within the context of our Big Vision for education – and in the context of this vision being under attack as never before recently. Our policy statement "Bringing Down The Barriers" and other ‘satellite’ policy statements such as the 14-19 policy represents the hopes and beliefs of the overwhelming majority of teachers and other education workers. Yet it is fundamentally opposed by the provisions of the Education Bill – against which we have been so vigorously organising, campaigning and lobbying.

 

Of course we have much in common with many local and national politicians too. The “Children’s Agenda” represented by the Children’s Act and “Every Child Matters” is one which we largely share, though its implementation in terms of Local Authority reorganisation and the issues surrounding the establishment of extended schools and Children’s Centres remain matters for debate and negotiation. We will find ways through all this for the benefit of children and the profession. We share largely the vision of Derbyshire County Council as expressed in its “Smart Schools” public consultation which arose out of the Building Schools For the Future PFI funding.

 

But we cannot accept the blackmail and coercion applied by the Government which threatened to withhold BSF money for our crumbling secondary schools if the Authority did not agree to establish an “Academy” – privately run, largely publicly funded – in the County. We cannot accept the Government’s original intent to ban any new Authority run Community Schools – or for that matter their back peddling concession that still allows the Secretary of State to veto any such new school. We will not accept that the dog-eat-dog world of 21st century capitalist market economics has the best solution for our schools, or that competition between “independently run” Trust Schools is preferable to co-operation between democratically accountable LEA Community schools. We will not accept the direction this takes us in – the privatisation warned against by our international union organisation Education International, and advocated by the badly wounded European Constitution, the European Services Directive, and the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade In Services. This is their aim… fragmentation and eventual privatisation. As Micheal Milken, a leading US finance capitalist speaking to Arthur Levine, President of the Teachers’ College, Columbia University put it so clearly, “You guys are in trouble – and we’re gonna eat your lunch”. Education International put it more eruditely, “In the wake of other major public services which have been subject to extensive privatisation and deregulation, public education is increasingly being targeted by predatory and powerful entrepreneurial interests. The latter are aiming at nothing less than its dismantling by subjecting it to international competition”

 

Which takes me back to the beginning of my report. That’s why the Government does not want a debate. They know that the British public would be fundamentally opposed to such an agenda… but they think that people might just go for “choice and diversity.” In that innocent phrase, all the destructive intent of selfish interests is bundled up.

 

In the coming year, we need to do the day to day work of the union in support of our members, but we must never lose sight of the context, and the need for unity. Our work in TUC, in which I have regularly taken part over this year and previous tears, is invaluable in this. Just as a firm of airport caterers Gate Gourmet treated their workers intolerably, so teachers are on the sticky end of the stick sometimes – in fact too often. We need teachers to stick together, and we need to work for professional unity – and I was please to speak both for the division and the executive at PU2K’s AGM this year. But we need to build a powerful public sector alliance, and good supportive relations with all TUC affiliates in both public and private sectors. “We’re stronger together,” was how Steve Sinnott, our General Secretary ended his speech at the TUC, and I was very happy to support him in this.

 

This is likely to be my last report as Divisional Secretary and National Executive member, as I will soon be taking up my duties as Junior Vice President – and then, when I grow up – Senior VP, then President. It is a massive honour for me. In fact, I find it hard to believe that I am to have those positions – and I owe a real round of very sincere thanks to many people. Clearly, to those who nominated and worked for my election – and to all those who voted. I know people worked very hard – and I’ll always remember that. I am not subject to any more elections – but I always think of myself as accountable to you anyway! I want to thank Colin Tarrant, who, when I suddenly panicked (too late) about originally taking on the County Secretary job told me, “You’ll be fine. Just keep smiling, and make them think that you know more than they do…” This has proved to be invaluable advice. I’ll share it with John Holmes, but it will remain just between us.

 

I also need to thank, not just for immediate things, but for their work over many years, all the local activists and Officers, and Bev, Malcolm and all the colleagues at Regional Office for training, advice, support of all sorts. I’ve been very proud and please to have been part of such a great team of people.

 

But my biggest thanks are to Maria Thomas who runs – and I mean runs – our local Office. Without Maria I definitely could not have done the job. Without Maria it is unlikely that I would have had the job at all, as people would have seen through me long ago! She is hugely well organised, unflappable and amazingly co-operative, though I think sometimes she might be screaming inside! Thanks Maria!

 

I love education and the teaching profession. The Union, nationally and locally, has a huge responsibility in claiming to be central to the defence and future of both. Everyone associated with our union must apply the same degree of professionalism to union work as we do to our teaching, the same degree of commitment as we show the children, the same degree of organised determination as we would if defending our immediate family. We are under attack, but I believe, working together, the NUT is up to the job, locally and nationally.

 

Onwards and Upwards!

 

Bill

 

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