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.
  1. I know your Mum has been with you at Conference she is very proud of you and so too are we.
  1. Conference, we should be proud too of the achievements of the Union. In all aspects of our work, we’re moving forward.
  1. Our policies are not just policies – they are progressive, effective equal opportunity National Union of Teachers’ policies.
  1. Our principles are not just principles - they are sound and clear, deeply held absolutely correct NUT principles.
  1. Our associations are not just associations – they are hard working, campaign leading, education defending, comprehensive school promoting, and academy opposing NUT associations.
  1. And Conference increasingly, teachers, members of the NUT, are turning to their union for their professional development.
  1. Conference, to make this point, we’ve prepared something to watch.

VIDEO APPEARS HERE

  1. Conference, that gives a flavour of what we’re about.
  1. Professional development is what teachers and members want - it’s union work.
  1. Professional development is integral to the range of services and activities we provide. As a professional association andtrade union, our work would be incomplete without it.
  1. 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.
  1. And our CPD prospectus is going to grow.
  1. The Executive has agreed to increase our investment in professional development and we will establish the Union’s own institute of professionallearning.
  1. We are: a learning union.
  1. Conference, we are establishing a partnership between the largest teachers’ organisation, the NUT and the University of Cambridge - Faculty of Education.
  1. The new partnership will be launched on 9June2006. It’ll involve John MacBeath and colleagues from Cambridge. We want to pack Mander Hall that day.
  1. 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.
  1. And we’re doing this in other ways: reaching the parts others cannot reach.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Significant numbers of local officers have already been introduced to our new interactive web-based support network, HEARTH.
  1. The NUT was the only teachers’ organisation to win funding from the Department of Trade and Industry’s Union Modernisation Fund.
  1. The development of Hearth will be accelerated through this additional funding.
  1. 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.
  1. Through our website facility, thousands have sent their messages online to their MPs. Thousands more posted the letters we provided.
  1. Our ability to lobby and make an impact on MPs has been greatly enhanced.
  1. The Union is moving forward.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. We’ve been determined and resolute.
  1. 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.
  1. We didn’t seek these changes.
  1. We didn’t support these changes.
  1. Those who were behind them were determined that they be implemented.
  1. We’ve had significant successes in our campaign, demonstrating the strength, courage and resolve of the NUT at all levels.
  1. 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.
  1. Let there be no doubt, we need this strength and this sense of purpose.
  1. 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.
  1. As teachers must, so must their union.
  1. 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.
  1. The marketisation of education will damage the educational opportunities of children from the toughest areas.
  1. 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.
  1. And we’ve been effective in reaching out to the educational community. Our ability to form alliances with parents and governors, campaign organisations and students, was clearly demonstrated at the joint conference, A Good Local School for Every Child on 25 March.
  1. 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.
  1. No one at the DfES vetted my speech before I came to this stand.
  1. We’re independent.
  1. We listen to others.
  1. We respect all opinions.
  1. But it’s our clear duty to make our views known throughout the profession and throughout the country.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. It’s that link between communities and schools which the Government through its Education and Inspections Bill completely fails to reflect and understand.
  1. 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.
  1. Indeed, it’s worth reflecting on the absurdity of the Government’s Trust School proposals.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Or there could be debates about how school uniforms could reflect each trust’s interests.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Head teachers and their staffs will need to be experts in conflict resolution between Parents’ Councils and Trust school governing bodies.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Conference, on top of this we have the spin and hype about selection, not only from this Government but also from the Conservatives.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Selection leads to social and ethnic segregation.
  1. Selection undermines our country’s capacity to run an education system which meets all its youngsters’ needs.
  1. Conference, the debate on selection in which the country has been involved has produced the moment for full abolition. The opportunity is now.
  1. President, I urge Parliament to abolish pupil selection in all its forms now.
  1. Abolish selection by aptitude.
  1. Abolish selection by ability.
  1. Get rid of it now. No school’s existence will be threatened by such an action.
  1. We make no apology for campaigning to preserve and develop comprehensive education.
  1. We make no apology for resisting the expansion of selection.
  1. We make no apology for calling for the end of selection.
  1. 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!
  1. We make no apology for insisting that only within the public sector will the education of our children be safe and secure.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Conference, the Government’s vision encourages fragmentation, segregation and democratic deficit.
  1. It does nothing about enhancing our communities’ commitment to education.
  1. It does nothing for equality of opportunity.
  1. I cannot believe that a chaotic admissions system and self-governing independent status tackles the needs of ghettoised communities.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. We’ll continue to be at the heart of the campaign to reject the structural proposals in the Bill.
  1. 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.
  1. If the Prime Minister is so sure his ideas are popular with parents let them choose, let them have a say in a ballot.
  1. And we’ll need to be vigilant in Wales.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. The decision on who should be the next leader is for others.
  1. 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. A developing awareness from all Parliamentary parties that this country is part of a global family.
  1. 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.
  1. We certainly don’t stand by while youngsters across the world struggle to get on the education ladder.
  1. David Cameron’s policy review is addressing these issues. So too will Menzies-Campbell.
  1. But Gordon Brown is taking the lead. With other finance Ministers, he’s committed our country to back an initiative by NelsonMandela, to fund new ten-year plans to meet the Millennium Development Goal of education for every child by 2015.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. The Chancellor intended to turn promises on education into reality, school by school, class by class and child by child.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Conference, we should be proud that the Chancellor chose us to convey this message. It’s a recognition of our work and our commitment.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. Conference we will hold him to account for these commitments in what ever capacity he serves in the future.
  1. We will create the Gordon Brown Index to measure his success or otherwise. We will publish the Gordon Brown Index report annually.
  1. 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.
  1. We’ll respond to a new government’s proposals for education:
  • positively;
  • professionally;
  • critically; and
  • without fear or favour.