National Executive Thursday 7th September 2006

All National Executive members are elected by, and are accountable to members in their District, and are able to report in detail to their Associations & Divisions, to School Reps and directly to members as necessary. I was elected Vice President by members nationally – and so accountability is harder to achieve. I have no intention of seeking to in any way replace National Executive members’ reports – and so I will not be reporting in the same detail or covering all issues discussed, but giving my views of some of the key issues. I hope that any Local Officers, School Reps or members with points to make, or questions to ask will do so by email – billvp@tiscali.co.uk. I’ll guarantee an answer, and will put some on the website to encourage further debate.

“Every Division Secretary and every local Officer and all our members will need to be active and determined to pursue the Union’s workload campaign in the coming months… we will be putting serious resources to work to ensure that the campaign succeeds…

Our Conference and every survey of members – and indeed teachers in other unions – shows that workload remains number one priority…

We now have a winning strategy for reducing that workload… but it will need maximum involvement and activity”

So said Steve Sinnott to the Union’s National Executive during the debate on carrying forward our Workload campaign. The proposals were unanimously endorsed. There will be a national ballot this term, to endorse the new workload guidelines, and to declare readiness to take industrial action where school Governing Bodies refuse to adopt such guidelines. These guidelines will refer to the whole range of teachers’ duties and activities – including importantly the new proposed Performance Management procedures - endorsed and promoted by our sister teacher unions – which would bring about more work and stress for teachers across the board.

I made the point that we need to stress the inter-relationship of our on-going campaign against the Education Bill with our new workload campaign. We stand for a “a good local school for every child”. Defeating the Education Bill would be a major defining step in securing this – but we also need to reduce teacher workload to provide good schools, and ALSO keep the pressure up on Government to honour Gordon Brown’s “budget pledges” to raise the level of spending on state schools to that of those in the private sector (from £4000 per pupil to £9000 per pupil per year) and to reduce the teacher:pupil ratio from 1:13 to 1:9… that of the private sector. If these “pledges” – later described as merely “aspirational statements” were met – teacher workload would be dramatically cut!

It was unanimously agreed that we should revitalise the broad alliances the Union has shown itself of building at national and local level to win active support for these two campaigns on a single priority – “A good local school for every child”.

I would very much value the opportunity to visit schools, local Associations and Divisions to develop these ideas, hear the views, needs and priorities of members and local Officers, take part in campaign meetings etc. Contact me on billvp@tiscali.co.uk

The Executive also discussed the TUC agenda. We are putting two motions – one on the Education Bill and another on Workplace Bullying. We are also proposing two amendments – one on the treatment of part-time workers, the other on the need for a united campaign to defend all public services. It was also agreed by the Executive to ask the TUC delegation to put me forward to speak on the need to promote an “organising culture” in Unions – based on members’ views and priorities, rather than a “Social Partnership” approach which relies on persuading members to support behind-closed-door deals hatched between unions, employers and government.

I will be at TUC from 11^th to 15^th September – and I will report each day via this website

You will find the detail of these workload issues here and from your Executive member