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teachers have never needed our union more than we do now. Our Conference theme
- "Organising for education, professionalism and solidarity" - is not
just a slogan or soundbite. As someone almost said, "This is not a time
for soundbites; we feel the hand of history on our shoulders."
Our
theme throws out a challenge to us, to all teachers, and to all those who stand
for educational progress.
As
Vice-President, I've been taking part in discussions with members and local
officers all over
campaigning activities, school group, association and division meetings.
I can
tell you this...
The
Teachers
are committed people, with a passion for the learning process, who look forward
to and love teaching.
The
education process should be one that is liberating and exhilarating, responsive
and dynamic.
The
relationship between teacher and student should be a daily mutually
invigorating experience.
Central
to this, is the teacher's ability to exercise their professional judgement, in
directing their work,
to
the real needs, aptitudes and interests of their students.
So why,
for increasing numbers of teachers, is this very far from their daily reality?
Why are
they facing punitive inspection,
top-down
target setting without proper
educational basis, policies that divide teachers and make them compete,
bullying management practices, useless paperwork, crushing workload, imposed
mechanistic teaching styles?
We need
to explain to the world what is happening,
and why
it's happening.
Now we
are balloting for action against year on year pay cuts, ready to work closely
with all other unions.
The best
way to "just say no" to all the unacceptable pressures and burdens
heaped on teachers,
is to
just say YES in the pay ballot.
Enough
is enough!
The NUT
is standing up for all teachers.
Let
there be no doubt in anyone's mind. In the face of adversity, the NUT is taking
positive action, leading to sustained membership growth.
We are
organising new young teachers, developing new organising tools and methods,
putting forward challenging proposals for the future of our service based on
the professional judgement of teachers and our solidarity with all education
workers and the communities that we serve.
In doing
so, we restate our total commitment to professional unity, to a single union
for all teachers.
Put half
a dozen, ten or twenty teachers in a room to discuss these issues,
and
you unleash a lively debate - full of passion and strongly held beliefs.
We all
know that, to be useful, such debate must produce unity around the way forward.
That's
our task over the next few days, with hundreds of teachers in the room, each
representing hundreds more.
We love
our Conference, because of the passion,
the
conviction, the high quality of debate - but above all because of the unity, and
the vital activity, that results.
So, "Organising for Education".
Education,
worldwide, is both the most essential of services to individuals, and the most
essential of industries to the societies in which we live.
Our
product is educated, self-confident, sophisticated, innovative citizens and the
potential for soundly-based, developing, healthy communities and nations in a
peaceful world.
In a
fast changing world - each new change in technology and science, presenting us
with an ethical and philosophical challenge - we need young, critical minds.
And
those critical minds will be most effective when, equipped with a world view,
they can deal with worldwide challenges - environmental change, genetic
engineering, human rights and the sovereignty of nations, peace and war,
economics for profit or for people.
But
education in itself is not enough to guarantee positive outcomes. All aspects of social life are
interconnected.
For
education to achieve positive, progressive outcomes, we need a positive,
progressive social and political environment.
But we
live in a very divided world, and in very divided
societies, within that world - particularly in terms of class, wealth and
access to power.
The
demands of the most economically and politically powerful often lead to huge
disparities - in terms of "haves" and "have-nots" -
nationally and internationally - leading to problems for the educational
process, and for those working in it.
One such
policy, accelerated over the last two decades, is the fragmentation and
marketisation of education - schools encouraged and forced to compete with each
other - increasing Local Authority marginalisation, and increasing private
sector control.
The
rapid expansion of the Academies programme is the latest step in this
"direction of travel".
If they
are not stopped, there will be worse to come.
Despite
evidence that Academies work against the interests of precisely that section of
children that the "spin" says they were to serve - the children from
the toughest backgrounds - the programme continues to expand, together with its
ugly twin the
Our
evaluation, through our Anti- Privatisation Unit, and the Anti-Academies
Alliance, reveals a very different picture to that "spin".
More exclusions.
Fewer children with special needs on roll.
Less teacher control.
Even greater workload.
Misuse of the curriculum.
Public
money used for private purposes.
No
accountability.
Damaging
effects on neighbouring schools...
The list
goes on.
So why
is this process pursued so aggressively?
This is not just a bad education policy arising out of misguided
politics.
There is
a lot of money involved in public education in
Global
government spending on education,
runs at
$2 thousand billion, including the employment of well over 50 million teachers
and maintenance of hundreds of thousands of educational institutions - and it's
a growing "market".
Education
International puts it like this.
"Some
see this immense bloc as a dream market for future investment… 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."
As
Michael Milken, convicted securities fraudster,
"junk bond king", and leading US finance capitalist, said to Arthur
Levine, President of Teachers' College, Columbia University, while
"discussing" education privatisation,
"You
guys are in trouble - and we're going to eat your lunch…"
Through
EI, we hear similar stories from all over the "free market" world.
This
drive to exploit education for profit is what lies behind the worldwide
"direction of travel" towards the fragmentation, marketisation and
privatisation of education.
This
despite the international research that integrated, publicly run, comprehensive
systems deliver the highest quality education to the broadest range of
children.
I said
that there could be worse to come.
Read "Academies: a model education?"
- a new publication by the neoliberal think-tank
"Reform" - particularly popular with the Tory Party.
It
proposes that all state schools should have completely independent
managements, our national pay and conditions should be abolished, schools
should have the right to exclude pupils without appeal, and "the
teacher unions' role should be transformed from protecting and negotiating
members' employment rights" -
referred to elsewhere in the document as "blocking reform".
But
let's not forget who is in charge right now.
Parliamentary
Under Secretary of State for Schools and Learners,
Lord Adonis' principal policy areas are "school formation including
He first
served the Government as Tony Blair's Education adviser at the No 10 Policy
Unit - and, in that capacity, took a dozen education
journalist "opinion formers" to
Actually,
it is not strictly true to say that
It was
pre-dated by that introduced by General Pinochet in Chile, as part of his
programme to reverse the development of state education undertaken by the
Allende government that he had overthrown by coup and bombing of the
Presidential Palace.
Vouchers
are one route to full blown privatisation.
There
are others.
Our
government is signed up to the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on
Trade in Services (GATS) which targets 160 services for privatisation.
It is
legally binding, commits members to a liberalisation agenda, and locks-in
domestic privatisation, deregulation, and contracting out of public services.
At
present
But the
Government's "direction of travel" - with
WTO and
Education International lawyers - coming from very different positions - agree
there could be a generalised risk to our state schools as the process
continues.
Many
experts agree that the privatising agenda embodied in European Union
initiatives, such as the discredited Constitution and the Services Directive
take us in the same direction.
Organising
for state comprehensive education,
for a
good local state school for every child and community is thus a huge task,
against very powerful forces.
To
achieve it, we'll need all the strength of a united profession, supported
actively by our communities on a local and national scale.
Not only
that.
All
public services are being threatened by the same process, and all public sector
workers need to confront the threat together.
A big task!
A simple
message to the individually and corporately rich, who
are backing the school privatisation programme.
Our
communities do not want their schools sold off.
If you
really want to support education as you claim - try paying your taxes.
So, secondly, "Organising for Professionalism".
For
some, the term is one that they prefer not to use, as its common usage has
given it an "elitist" edge.
That's certainly not what we mean.
We fight
for teacher professionalism not to distance ourselves from other workers, but
because it embodies key, unique features that are essential if our schools and
service are to be properly run, if the needs of all children, not just a few,
are to be met.
We highly
value and respect the role of all workers in our schools - admin, school
keeping and maintenance staff, dinner supervisors, librarians… a long and
important list.
We need
and value the work of our fantastic teaching assistants working directly alongside
us, one-to-one and with small groups of children.
This is
our team - and it needs to work well together, each having an indispensable and
distinct role.
And
clearly the lead role of the qualified teacher is not one that can be replaced
by any other.
But
respect for teachers' professional roles has never been a central theme of New
Labour.
This is
Margaret Hodge (then at the Department for Education and Employment) writing in
the New Statesman, just one year after the 1997 Blair election under the
headline...
"Fewer
teachers, please, not more."
"When
the public think of teachers, they think of militant unions, resistance to
change and long holidays…
In a
few years, I believe, some classes will not be led by a fully trained teacher.
This
may sound heretical, but it is common sense.
A
trained classroom assistant may be as useful as a teacher.
In
ten to fifteen years, I believe there will be fewer trained teachers in our
schools.
The
teachers' monopoly in the classroom will be brought to an end…."
As early
as May 1998, Margaret Hodge was preparing the way for "The Workforce
Agreement".
Ostensibly
aimed at reducing teacher workload, this in fact had a trio of purposes -
firstly to bring to an end "the teachers' monopoly in the
classroom",
then to
break the joint union unity that then existed on the need to act to reduce
workload, and thirdly to suck some of our sister unions into an exclusive and
continuing "top down" relationship with Government they call the
"Social Partnership", excluding the NUT.
Another
such strategic position has been to maintain and develop the "target and
testing" regime - again undermining our professionalism.
Teachers
become subject to a "what, when and how to teach" diktat, against
which we are spuriously measured by often mechanistic, statistically based
performance targets that have nothing to do with real educational objectives;
this within a deficit model of inspection that is based on an assumption that
there are "weak teachers" in every school, who need to be identified
and "dealt with".
This, in
turn, leads to top-down management practices, as headteachers
fear that they themselves will be criticised as "weak" if they do not
follow this orthodoxy.
Management
bullying is thus on the increase, attempting to coerce often the most
experienced teachers to conform to a model of mechanistic lesson planning,
delivery, assessment and paperwork.
No
teacher is afraid of hard work - though we challenge the imposition of workload
which means teachers often working 12 hours a day and more, and through
weekends.
We hate
"useless toil" as William Morris called it,
and
in demanding that our professionalism be respected in knowing best how to teach
and run schools, we champion "useful work".
High
quality education relies on teachers creatively responding to children's needs
through the thoughtful application of their professional judgement.
But in
the current Orwellian world, this is just seen, in Margaret Hodge's words, as "resistance
to change".
Let's be
clear.
Teachers
are NOT resistant to change, but we are and will remain resistant to political
impositions in pursuit of a "public service reform" agenda that has
nothing to do with standards of services and everything to do with
privatisation.
We are
resistant to the dismantling of state education and its replacement by
competing individual educational institutions.
We are
resistant to increasing control of schools by the private sector.
We are
resistant to the "commodification" of education, with parents encouraged
to "shop around" using misleading statistics.
We are
resistant to the undermining of teachers' professional judgement through
distorted top down punitive models of performance management and inspection.
We are
resistant to the replacement of qualified teachers with unqualified staff.
We are
resistant to crushing workloads which prevent teachers from performing as
creative professionals.
We are
resistant to competition for pay between teachers, in what should be the
cooperative process of education.
We are resistant to salary cuts for teachers and other public
sector workers.
Would it
be too far fetched to suggest that there is a conspiracy to force through
"public service reform" - privatisation and the deprofessionalisation
known as "flexibility" - by creating impossible conditions in
our classrooms, and so denigrating teachers and state schools?
You
might think so… but listen to this - a direct quote from "The
"The
Government's approach to public service reform has four main elements
* top down performance management (pressure
from government)
* the introduction of greater competition and
contestability in the provision of public services
* the introduction of greater pressure from
citizens including through choice and voice; and,
* measures to strengthen the capability and
capacity of civil and public servants and of central and local government to
deliver improved public services"
These
are the very factors that teachers find so destructive to their role as
professionals - punitive performance management, meaningless paperwork, the
threat to schools through Academies and Trusts, the "targets, testing and
league table" approach to evaluation, and the threat of capability
procedures for those who do not conform … and all to achieve the government's
political policy on public service reform.
Yes, we
are resistant to that.
Change
in education, essential as the world develops ever faster, should be firmly
based on teachers' professionalism and professional judgement.
What a
revolutionary idea!
A message to government.
Put
teachers in the driving seat, give us the resources to do the job, stop
undermining our profession and our schools, and you will see the fastest and
most radical change you could ever imagine.
And so to the third element of our Conference theme -
solidarity.
Let me
quote from our General Secretary's introduction to "A
“The explicit value of solidarity needs
to underline our approach internationally, nationally and locally.
It can inspire action to promote active
citizens taking responsibility and understanding their rights.
It can help engender community spirit
and
self-respect.
It will help us appreciate that children and parents are not 'clients', that citizens
are not mere customers.
Importantly, an emphasis on solidarity
will enable us to play a part in the construction of policies to help build
community cohesion, end poverty and exclusion…."
For
several decades all the research regarding educational achievement has given us
the same uncompromising message.
There is
a direct and clear correlation between the background of the child - their
family's relative wealth and poverty - and the educational opportunities they
can access, and their attainments.
RH Tawney in 1931 wrote, "The hereditary curse upon
English education is its organisation along lines of social class… the
barbarous association of differences of educational opportunities with
distinctions of wealth and social position."
Hoggart,
Jackson & Marsden, Newsom, Douglas, Hargreaves, Bernstein, Bourdieu,
Halsey - names familiar to all who studied to become teachers when examination
of research was central to that study - all followed in subsequent decades, all
starting from different points, all reaching the same incontrovertible position
- there is a direct, sustained and devastating correlation between education
attainment and social class.
Recently
the work of Leon Feinstein of University College London, quoted in Gillian
Evan’s work
"Educational
Failure and White Working Class Children in
"The
research shows how it is possible to combine socio-economic classification of
the household with the child's overall developmental score at age 22 months to
accurately predict educational qualifications at the age of 26 years…
By
the age of 22 months, children's developmental score is already stratified by
social class, and that stratification has increased significantly by the age of
10 years"
And in
The Guardian,
"A
study by academics at
a
school's success is based… overwhelmingly,
on
the class background of its pupils."
The
Government recognises the link.
The
Department for Education & Skills, publishing the "5 Year
Strategy" in 2004 wrote,
"We
also fail our most disadvantaged children and young people… internationally our
rate of child poverty is still high ….
The
links between poor health, disadvantage and low education outcomes are
stark."
David
Miliband, then Schools Minister, told a conference on social mobility,
"When
it comes to the link between educational achievement and social class, four
factors are key to this depressing pattern.
First,
the simple fact of growing up in poverty, with the restrictions it places on
housing, diet and lifestyle. Second, family factors -
critically parental interest and support, which itself is driven by parental
experience of education. Third, neighbourhood factors.
The fourth is the quality of schooling.
The
first three require long-term change in social and economic life. But the great
power of schooling is that it is in our power to change it now, and change it
for the better."
We have
to ask, "If the first three require long term change in social and
economic life - where is Government strategy? Why is your absolute priority not
the elimination of poverty?"
In fact,
as the recent Rowntree report shows, the situation has worsened considerably
since Miliband's statement - with over 100,000 more children living in poverty,
the total being 3.8million - one in four children.
Consider
the Government's figures from the Office of National Statistics
* The
richest 1% of the population own 34% of the total wealth
* The
richest 10% own 71% of the wealth
* 90% of
the people share just 29% of the total
* The
poorest 50% of the population share 1% of the wealth between them
Let's be
clear about "social class".
The fact
is that 90% of the population, black, white, women, men - teachers included -
rely on our ability to work for our living, not on profits, dividends or
executive bonuses.
We are
all subject to periodic attempts to cut our pay, and are just a few pay packets
away from financial disaster.
Those in
work are made to work too hard and too long, and job insecurity is growing.
The halo
has been stripped from those professions previously the subject of reverent
awe.
The fact
is, that 90% of us are working class now.
The
logic of such a society is that the wealth gap is huge between those at the
very top, and those at the very bottom.
This gap
is widening, the process accelerating, and what little "social
mobility" there was is declining.
Those at
the bottom are not the insular, simplistic, racist crew often portrayed in the
media, but - both black and white - the victims of society's division… and
their real needs and aspirations need to be addressed.
The
vicious exploitation of this by the fascist Right needs to be challenged, not
pandered to.
The sad
fact is that governments - both Tory and New Labour - while recognising the
correlation between class disadvantage, poverty and educational
underachievement, have attempted to turn the matter on its head, and have
sought to blame the education system, teachers and other public sector workers
for continuing inequalities, for lack of "social mobility" and social
cohesion!
Most
recently, Ed Balls put it like this in a Guardian article.
"A
culture of excusing poor performing pupils on the basis of deprivation will let
another generation fail".
We could
put it another way.
"A
culture of excusing poor performing governments on the basis of blaming
teachers will let another generation of politicians get away with it."
Now the
Government strategy is to impose a new socially engineered "legitimacy"
in these issues.
We see
"
The
former will be largely populated by young people from the toughest backgrounds
- and often staffed by "appropriately qualified staff" as the
Department calls them - in other words, often not qualified teachers.
Our
approach is fundamentally different.
All
children whatever their backgrounds need and deserve a broad, balanced
curriculum - not divergent academic and vocational "pathways".
The
devastating effects of social and economic inequality in Britain are not just
on the pages of the research papers - they are in front of us daily in our
classrooms - and in our hospitals, in our housing and on the streets of our
cities, and amongst those subject to rural poverty too.
Recently
the Association of Chief Police Officers, in the person of the Forensic Science
Director of the Metropolitan Police proposed that primary school children from
the most disadvantaged backgrounds should be targeted for DNA sampling.
He said,
"If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend,
then in the long term, the benefits of targeting young people are extremely
large. You could argue the younger the better.
Criminologists
say some people will grow out of crime, others won't. We have to find out who
are possibly going to be the biggest threats to society."
The
concept of targeting the victims of poverty for special surveillance is totally
unacceptable to us, and we will have nothing to do with it.
To
identify a group as potentially criminal by virtue of their class position is
not just foolhardy, prejudiced and dangerous. It has the smell of the police
state about it, the whiff of fascism as faced by many teachers and communities
elsewhere in the world.
We will
not allow our disadvantaged young people, badly behaved as they may be as a
result of their life experiences, to be demonised and criminalised and labelled
as "the biggest threats to society".
We
teachers have a responsibility here.
Of
course, we must continue to do everything - and then a bit more - to raise all
pupils' aspirations, motivation and achievement.
But we have
to refute the notion that schools can in themselves put the matter right.
The
problem has its root in our wider society, in a system that relies on the
existence of "have-nots" in order that the "haves" can have
more than their share - a lot more than their share.
The huge
elephant in the room of class discrimination remains the private education
system.
Educational
privilege based on wealth is unfairly discriminatory.
A recent
Sutton Trust study of 500 leading figures in law, politics, medicine,
journalism and business showed that over 50% had been privately educated,
whereas just 7% of today's school-age children attend independent schools.
Dr
Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College,
recently told his private school colleagues that they should not "…carry
on as we are in splendid isolation, detached from the mainstream national
education system… thereby perpetuating the apartheid, which has so dogged
education and national life in Britain since the second world war".
Well,
we'd disagree with his answer - more private school sponsorship of Academies…
but we might have other suggestions for dealing with this unfair
discrimination, this privilege based on wealth, this educational apartheid.
Firstly,
we are monitoring Gordon Brown's "aspirational target" of matching
the funding of state schools with private sector funding.
But
let's also consider our own alternative "direction of travel" - from
private to public - towards bringing all schools into the state sector.
Then, as
those who have sought to buy educational privilege found themselves
unable to do so and obliged to send their children to community schools – then
we would see some urgent improvements in our state system!
There is
not just one
Class
differences remain strong - and the values of ordinary working people of
community, fairness, justice, equity, security, hard work are not reflected in
those others whose priorities are wealth, power, privilege and individual and
personal advantage.
The
unpalatable and politically unpopular fact is,
in my
view, that social class advantage and disadvantage, the growing wealth/poverty
gap - far from being aberrations in our free market, dog-eat-dog, private not
public society - are economic imperatives that government feels unable or
unwilling to challenge.
If it is
money that makes the world go round,
it is
inequality in wealth and power that keeps it turning the way that we are
encouraged to think of as normal.
We
teachers need to be part of a wider movement that rejects the fundamental
systemic inequalities of society, rejects the social mechanisms that sustain
inequality, and works strategically against them.
We need
and want to reflect the values of the ordinary people of
"free market".
This is
the solidarity we need to build and express - solidarity with other trades
unionists, with our communities, with the families of the children we teach.
We need
to definitively research those class factors that limit the achievement of
children - and we need to promote policy designed to eradicate them.
We need
to insist that the Government takes specific action to meet its own stated aim
to halve child poverty by 2010.
They
"missed" the first 2005 target, and are on track to miss the 2010
target.
The
TUC's Brendan Barber was right to declare his "bitter
disappointment" after the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.
He said,
"The Chancellor had a golden opportunity to show his commitment to
ending child poverty.
Instead,
he decided to transfer meagre tax levies from the super-rich to the merely
well-off.
If
the super-rich and big companies are not paying their fair share, it means that
public services are not getting the growth they need, and that we do not have
the resources to end child poverty."
The
recent budget again presented the opportunity - and again it was refused.
Of
course, children do not live in poverty by themselves. It is a question of
family poverty, conditioned by unemployment, low wages, poor housing, inadequate benefits.
The
target of halving child poverty by 2010 must not be relegated to another
Government "aspiration".
Action
to achieve it would have a real impact on children's chances in education.
What
policies and measures should they follow?
The TUC
has proposed the development of integrated policy on education, training, youth
employment and apprenticeships.
That
Government should ensure security of employment rather than promoting
insecurity - particularly affecting low paid workers - in the name of
"workforce flexibility."
The
level of the minimum wage, and benefits too, should be raised to a level
necessary to support dignified and secure living.
There
should be a new commitment to high quality affordable council housing - and no
child should, under any circumstances, be sleeping rough.
There
should be the extra £4billion pounds put into Child Tax Credit that the
And
there should be established a progressive, redistributive taxation system aimed
particularly at getting the super-rich, non-doms and
big companies to pay "their fair share".
All are
fundamental to raising educational achievement. How about that as a budget for
a Labour Government?
In
deciding to follow such targets, any Government would need allies - and they
would find no stronger supporter in this than the trade union movement.
Some
teachers may regard this sort of thing as being too political.
But it's
often these same teachers who work hard and long - often too hard and long for
their own health - to raise the aspirations and achievement of children from
the toughest backgrounds.
Their
commitment and work is a very fine thing, something that all should value and
respect.
But
despite generations of such teachers, the problems remain.
All the
evidence is that the solution is very largely outside of the classroom, and is
based on social progress, on progressive policies that challenge "global
market" imperatives, the power of money and privilege.
Such
policies do not come about without a bit of a struggle.
The
pressures of the privatisation agenda are international pressures - but they
impact directly on us, and have their effects every day in our classrooms.
International
solidarity, mutual support between teachers around the world, is not just a
slogan - it is a practical necessity and absolutely central to our work, if we
are to win the fight for education at home and abroad.
We need
to act on our solidarity with all those in both the developing and developed
worlds struggling for publicly provided education and against privatisation. We
need each other!
If there
is not renewed governmental commitment, we are on target to miss the UN's
Millennium Development Target of seeing every primary aged child in education
by the year 2015.
So it is
particularly important that we show our solidarity both with the achievements
of those developing nations that have made education a priority, and with
teachers who are persecuted by reactionary governments for their efforts to do
so.
I've
just returned from the Cuban teacher union conference, where they have been
isolated from "free market" imperatives for the last 50 years.
Uniquely
in that part of the world, every child is in school, with free education,
uniforms, food and health care.
Class
sizes are limited to 20 in Primary Schools and 15 in Secondary Schools.
All
educational initiatives have to be agreed by the teacher union, and largely emerge
"bottom up" from best practice in their schools.
Their
education system is regarded as one of "good practice" by
UNESCO.
If a
small developing nation subject to economic blockade by the world's most
powerful nation can make education a priority, and put the professionals in
charge, why can't the fourth most powerful economy in the world?
At the
other end of the scale, in Ethiopia, where our General Secretary has played
such an important role in supporting the beleaguered teachers' union, and in bringing
the situation to world attention, the government has stepped up its assault on
our comrades there - declaring the Ethiopian Teachers' Association illegal,
seizing its assets, and threatening again its leaders with imprisonment, and
violence from the security forces, who already murdered the Deputy General
Secretary Assafa Maru.
So,
today we again express our solidarity with all those who are struggling to
build their systems of education and defend teachers' rights, and solidarity
with teachers who are persecuted by repressive governments for their commitment
to doing so.
Solidarity with those who are fighting privatisation, both in
the developing and developed world.
And solidarity with our communities here at home.
At each
stage of that struggle, there have been those who have believed that the status
quo could not be changed, that the fight could not be won.
But
there have been others who have taken up the fight, and passed it on to the
next generation.
We meet
in Manchester - a historic city at the centre of that struggle, with the early
milestones of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, the
formation of the National Charter Association in 1840, the source of Engels' influential work "The Conditions Of The
English Working Class" in 1844, and the establishment of the TUC in
1868.
"Cottonopolis", as
On one
side - slavery, brutal repression, exploitation of workers at home and abroad, resulting in acute poverty - also resulting in huge wealth
and power for the minority.
On the
other side, a demand for democracy, decent living and working conditions,
respect and education - resulting in solidarity and collectivity, and the
empowerment of the mass of people.
The
struggle for education for ordinary working people has been a central theme of
that history - then and ever since.
It has
been a struggle because there have always been those who have feared, rightly,
that such advances would challenge their privileged positions.
Of
course, the conditions we face are not those of the 19th Century. But some of
the issues are very similar.
Community or individualism?
The common good or private profit?
Solidarity
or control by powerful minorities?
Now in
the conditions of the 21st Century it is our responsibility to take the
struggle for education forward. We are living through pivotal times - as
important as the 1870 and 1902 Acts, the huge advances of 1944, the fight for
Comprehensive Education in 1960s.
The
historians will look back at the first decades of the 21st century to ask,
"What happened to state education? Was it dismantled and privatised, or
was there such a struggle that the situation was reversed, and became a marker
in the history of the fight for social progress?"
The
first blow we can strike following Conference is to announce a massive YES vote
in our pay ballot.
Teachers'
pay is not something separate from the fight for education. Only with decent
pay will we attract the best to be teachers… we don't do the job for the money,
but we can't do it without. If a society values its children, it will value its
teachers.
Much
more will be said during this conference on this issue - but let no-one be in
any doubt. The NUT is determined to protect teachers' pay, as part of our
campaign for properly resourced, properly run good local state schools for
every child and every community.
And we
will do so in solidarity with all other public sector workers facing the same
issues, defending their pay, defending their services, and defending the users
of their services - just like us.
The
responsibility for future teachers, for the education service, for the children
in our care, and for the communities who depend on us, is ours. We will live up to the task.
That's
why the National Union of Teachers is organising for Education, Professionalism
and Solidarity.
I'm very
proud to be President and a National Officer of this great
But when all is said and done, the
We need
to recommit ourselves to our "organising agenda", building our
strength in every school, building members' confidence that union membership
really does make a difference, building our strength in every community to
organise the fight for education on a wider basis.
The
I want
to conclude by quoting GCT Giles, NUT President in 1944, and a bit of a hero of
mine.
President
at the time of the defeat of Fascism, of the leap forward of the 1944 Education
Act, of the huge expression of the people for major social change, leading to
the victory of the 1945 Labour Government - we ought to mark his words
carefully.
"Our
responsibilities and our opportunities are immense - nothing less than the
nurture, education and training of a generation with the necessary character,
skill and knowledge and the still more necessary devotion to the people's cause
and the democratic way of life.
For
the cultivation of the human resources of the whole nation is a necessary
condition of a developing and broadening democracy,
just as social progress is a condition of a democratic education
system.
It is
a grand task, for which we shall need all our strength and faith, for it will
not be easy.
The
reactionary, die-hard forces, which too often in the past have succeeded in
strangling educational and social progress, have not undergone a sudden and
miraculous change of heart - they will have their successors.
Against
them we shall need all the strength, experience, leadership and resources of
our great
We
shall need more.
We
shall need, and can win, the active sympathy and co-operation of a public
opinion more enlightened and more determined than ever before to sweep aside
the obstruction of vested interest and privilege.
We
need, and can win, the aid of the parents of the children, of a united people.
With
the aid of the people we can conquer the future for all children, and that
victory will open up new opportunities, new hopes and new visions.
And
it will lay on us the responsibility of seeing that these hopes are not
betrayed."
Well, I
couldn't put it any better than that.
It is
a grand task, and it is a great responsibility.
But we
are a great profession, with a powerful
Together,
we can win,
for
education,
for
professionalism…
Solidarity
- forever!
Bill
Greenshields
President,
National