GENERAL SECRETARY CHRISTINE BLOWER’S SPEECH TO
NUT ANNUAL CONFERENCE IN HARROGATE
7 APRIL 2015
President, Conference,
Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers and, as I well remember Steve Sinnott saying, I love saying that. I was delighted to be re-elected. Thanks to all members who participated in the ballot. And thanks too for returning Kevin Courtney as Deputy General Secretary. The Union, as I have said before, is lucky to have him and I am delighted to work alongside him.
Following the tradition of General Secretaries before me, I open my remarks with thanks to our President, Philipa Harvey. She has chaired Conference with good humour and the lightness of touch but confident decisiveness that is the hallmark of a good President. Her passion for and commitment to education have been evident and I wish her well for her year in Office. She will be a fine ambassador for internationalism andthe Union.
We began Conference with a standout speech from our new President. And let me say that we have heard some brilliant speeches from delegates this Conference, as we always do. It’s, of course, invidious to pick out one but I’m going to anyway. Thank you to Greg Fox for giving me the biggest laugh about Ofsted, whilst making a very serious point, that I’ve had in a long time!
It is, of course, a privilege to be able to speak at the conclusion of our Conference but it does mean that so much that I could say has been covered in extraordinary, well-crafted 4 minute gems of speeches, and that’s not just my view. Visitors to our Conference from other unions make the same point. They are genuinely impressed.
We meet at an interesting time in the political cycle. We are now 30 days away from a General Election. I will return to that but, first, let’s dwell a while on the successes we have enjoyed since last Conference.
I want to pay tribute to the campaigners who had such a magnificent success in preventing academisation at Hove Park School. Hove not Gove, I believe was the slogan. He’s gone and Hove Park is still here. We know that not all anti-academy campaigns are as successful. So let’s applaud our colleagues and the campaigning they did with the community to pull it off.
A good model of Social Movement Trade Unionism that was a complete success. I pay tribute too,to the Hammersmith & Fulham Division and the whole of the Sulivan School Community for successfully saving Sulivan School from closure. More social movement trade unionism in action. In saving Sulivan, the Union saved a brilliant school but also a brilliant environment in which young children learn.
Let me also pay tribute to Bankside Primary School; not because they have fought off academisation or threat of closure but because they have the most wonderful School Council.
I pay tribute, too, to our rep at Bankside, Kauser Jan, whose work with the School Council and the School Community is exemplary. I was pleased that Kauser featured in a positive item about the contribution immigrants and their families make to Britain in an edition of UNITY magazine, which the Union is pleased to sponsor. I was very pleased to see in action at Bankside the kind of education we would all want for our own children and the sort of pedagogy in which, as teachers, we should want to engage. They made a presentation to me. You can see it here behind me on the screen. Their own Manifesto for education.
So, with 30 days to go to the General Election, clearly children at Bankside know what education policy should look like under the next government.
We have had a very great deal to do since we met at Easter last year. Our Stand up for Education campaign has been a model of how we get key messages beyond our own ranks and to the wider public. All of the Stand Up for Education campaign has put the Union at the heart of the debate about education. But nothing more so than the Education Question Times. So far there have been scores, with many more planned between now and May 6th. Some of them are listed on the screen.
The National Union of Teachers, as you all know, is never afraid of debate, so some panels have included people with whom we don’t always agree. For example, Kevin and I have both shared platforms with Sean Harford of Ofsted. Incidentally, he has apparently been asked on a number of occasions why he is doing things with the National Union of Teachers. His response, he tells me has been – because they asked me!
Even more surprisingly, perhaps was the Education Question Time in Hackney, when I shared a platform with Jonathan Simons of Policy Exchange and, of course, in Loughborough, where Nicky Morgan sat next to me. So debate is happening courtesy of the NUT.
The street stalls, the NUTea parties, leafleting of all sorts and, of course, Education Question Times have had a really big impact. We have won plaudits from teacher unions, both in Europe and beyond, for the effectiveness of this campaign. These Education Question Times and our Manifesto allow us to put forward our positive alternative for education and to win allies for it.
The endorsements for our Manifesto have come from far and wide. People will all have their favourites. I like the one from John MacBeath:
‘Here I stand. I can do no other. Standing up for education requires anyone with an interest in learning, teaching and leadership to challenge the language of performativity, the empty rhetoric of 'standards' and simplistic assertion with such contempt for evidence. I wholeheartedly endorse this statement of principle and will continue to swim upstream against the indulgences of current policy.’But they’re all good.
Engage, Pressure, Strike – the three elements of a well put together campaign. The pressure we have put on MPs and PPCs, through all of our actions and activities has resulted in more politicians having an idea of what the life of a teacher is like. You will all no doubt recall this leaflet, produced to hand out to delegates at the Conservative Party Conference. It was what tipped Nicky Morgan into opening the Workload Challenge. NUT activists led a social media action which got #tellNicky trending and which was seen by more than 600,000 people.
We were not impressed by Government’s announcements of what they were proposing in response to the Workload Challenge but clearly that was only the first step. The clarifications documents from Ofsted, which can be used in schools to good effect, were wrung out of Government and Ofsted because of NUT pressure in the talks.
It is of course a while ago now but let’s just enjoy again, for a moment the departure of Michael Gove from the DfE. Within days of the 10th July strike, he was gone – and all those Gove Must Go badges now take their place with all the other campaign memorabilia. And on his departure, so many teachers’ faces wreathed in smiles.Alas, although the man has gone, policy did not change. The Academies’ and Free Schools’ programme is still with us. David Cameron’s proposal of 500 free schools post the May Election was clearly choreographed to fit with the Policy Exchange report. On March 9th, David Cameron announced approval of 49 more free schools, as well as the promise of 500 to be opened by 2020 if his Party wins the Election. On the basis of no evidence he asserted that the Free Schools’ programme is “the most successful schools’ programme in recent British history”. I’m not entirely sure what he thought he meant by that but what I do know is that NUT analysis shows that, according to most recent Ofsted data, free schoolscertainly do not perform better than other state funded schools.
As of December 2014, 69% of free schools inspected were good or better. However, 81% of all other state funded schools were good or outstanding. The same data also shows that a large proportion of pupils in free schools were in schools rated ‘requires improvement or inadequate’.
In saying that free schools were both popular and effective on Radio 4, Nicky Morgan did have to admit that she hadn’t read the Policy ExchangeReport‘in detail’.
Jonathan Simons, Head of Education at Policy Exchangeasserts and, I think we would agree, that policymakers should make decisions on evidence. He goes on to say that:
‘The evidence clearly shows that free schools drive up standards of nearby schools in the local community, particularly ones which are low performing’.
And yet, and yet this is what the Report actually says:
‘It should be obvious – but bears setting out explicitly – that such data cannot demonstrate conclusively that any changes seen are as a response to a new Free School. A school appointing a new Head, a change to academy status, a glut of teachers leaving, a financial crisis…all of these can affect an individual school for better or worse’.
(I have to say that even from this think-tank that is really a statement of the patently obvious) and then the Report goes on:
‘It should also be remembered that the sample size in some of these categories is quite small and correlation should not be mistaken for causation’.
So much for evidence! I could go on about this Report and the responses to it from Simon Burgess, Professor of Economics at Bristol University and Henry Stewart of the Local Schools’ Network but instead let me turn to Janet Downs who also writes for the Local Schools’ Network. She is quite brilliant, in particular at laying bare the difference between truth and a terminological inexactitude. I love this article about Cuckoo Hall and the, it would seem, baseless claims by Patricia Sowter, to have turned it round.
In February 2015, the School’s website said:
‘In special measures 14 years ago, Cuckoo Hall Academy was turned round dramatically by Patricia Sowter and her team….14 years ago was 2001’, says Janet.
Cuckoo Hall was not in Special Measures in 2001. It had been removed from that category in 1999. An Ofsted inspection before Ms Sowter arrived said:
‘This is a very effective school. Teaching is good and leadership and management are very good. Pupils make good progress.’
The Advertising Standards Authority censured Cuckoo Hall in October 2012 for saying the school had been in Special Measures in 2002 – which was clearly untrue.
There is much more in this vein in Janet’s article which I commend to you. I will simply give you her conclusion:
‘Cuckoo Hall was an effective school before Ms Sowter went there and nowhere near as troubled as Ms Sowter and others (particularly Michael Gove) made out. Perhaps apologies are due to Mr R Allen and his team whose role in bringing Cuckoo Hall from Special Measures has been airbrushed from history.’
Janet has also some excellent material on Nicky Morgan’s use of statistics and, indeed, so much else. If you haven’t subscribed to the email alerts from the Local Schools’ Network, I really encourage you to do so. Janet’s posts always bring a smile to my face. Her tenacity to expose government spin is laudable.
Let me turn now to the Global Education Reform Movement– We heard about this from Kristine Mayle in her great speech to Conference on Friday.
Last May, not long after last Annual Conference, the Union held a very successful event on this key issue.
In this audience, I’m sure that the assertion that Education is a Human and Civil Right and a public good will meet with agreement and acclaim. It is, of course, not just the position of the NUT but of Education International and is, in fact, enshrined in the constitution of Finland.
However, many of us are working under governments whose philosophy is at variance with this principle. We, in the UK, as in many jurisdictions are still in the grip of neo-liberalism. Not so in Greece, of course, where the people made the wise decision that they had had enough of austerity and could vote for a party with a very different agenda.
Why is it, that over the last two or three decades, multi-national corporations, along with the World Bank and IMF have become so interested in education. Well, I think it’s pretty clear that it is because large sums of taxpayers’ money is spent on education. We believe, of course, that this should be spent through public authorities on the provision of a public good, but where we see investment, others with different approaches, attitudes and politics see the potential for profit. It is precisely therefrom that come all the unacceptable aspects of so-called education reform.
Teachers, and in particular teacher unions, are seen as the great block to reform because we believe our ways and our policies are better. These positions are characterised as teacher unions standing in the way of modernisation. Michael Gove once called us the enemies of promise and, of course, those who disagreed with him were derided as the Blob. Well, I think we, here, today, are pleased to seek to stand in the way of education being taken over by edu-businesses. The OECD has plans for a summit of the Global Education Industry: Here is an excerpt from the proposal document:
‘As many other sectors of public policy before, education is now witnessing a growth in domestic and international businesses developing and selling educational resources (text books, software, coursework) educational services to schools (learning devices, learning platforms, dedicated IT solutions) additional educational offerings to parents and learners themselves in some cases even complete forms of distributed institutional delivery with potential to become a commercial sub-sector of the system. In some countries this is now a recognised and accepted reality, in some it is heavily and often ideologically opposed as a privatised intrusion into an essentially public system.’
This sounds to me and to my colleagues from teachers’ unions around the world dangerously like a corporate takeover of what we have hitherto believed was a public good.
Profit has of course always been taken from the sale of educational materials. The new, and some of us would say more sinister development, is the level of control exerted by multi-nationals over the shape, content and assessment of the curriculum; and the amount of data they hold and who owns it. In this context, here is an extract from Nicky Morgan’s speech to a technology exhibition in London, our President quoted it on her speech on Saturday.
‘As we inject further choice and competition into the school system parents and students will rightly demand more information from us so they can exercise choice effectively. Already we have begun to produce destination data on school leavers to identify where they end up. We aim to include this in the 2017 league tables. In future, we could try to link qualifications to tax data in order to demonstrate the true worth of certain subjects.’
I think there are reasons to be worried.
Here’s another cause for concern. Stephen Simons from the Politico website writes: ‘Pearson (that’s one of the multi-nationals, thought of as rather benign here, but not necessarily so everywhere).
Pearson wields enormous influence over American education. It writes textbooks and tests that drive instruction in public schools across the nation. Its software grades students’ essays (it is a long time since I graded an essay but then I’m not sure I would have wanted software to do it – but perhaps I’m a Luddite), tracks students’ behaviour and diagnoses and treats Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The company administers teacher licensing exams and coaches teachers once they’re in the classroom. It advises principals.
You might ask what doesn’t it do?
Interesting then, to reflect on what Jonathan Zimmerman, education historian at New York University, has to say. He says:
‘The policies that Pearson are benefitting from may be wrong-headed in a million ways but it strikes me as deeply unfair to blame Pearson for them. When Federal government starts doing things like requiring all states to test all kids, there’s going to be gold in those hills. The people we’ve elected have created a landscape that has allowed Pearson to prosper.’
I think he’s letting Pearson off pretty lightly but he isn’t wrong that the policies borne of the neo-liberal agenda are the basic problem.
Of course, for some American parents and students in New Jersey, concern extends, not only to privatisation and control of the curriculum, but privacy and attempts at control of students’ lives. Pearson, it seems, has routinely engaged in what has been called ‘spying’ on young people’s social media accounts.
Whilst described as a matter of ‘good testing hygiene’ by a spokesperson for the tests, some parents describe it as ‘creepy’, the absurdity of accountability driving education and Pearson protecting its profits means companies spying on pupils.
There are certainly reasons to be concerned.
To you, in your school,Pearsonmay just be a purveyor of books – probably some quite good ones and maybe the provider of some at least half way decent CPD. This is not, however, its role and reputation everywhere.