NUT: Wales’ Largest Union for Qualified Teachers

Press Release: Immediate Release

TEACHER AND SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY IN WALES

Concerns regarding accountability measures in Wales have been raised at the NUT Annual Conference. The motion, put forward by teachers in Rhondda Cynon Taf, highlights the increasingly excessive and intrusive accountability measures being seen in schools which are having a detrimental impact on the ability of teachers to do their jobs.

Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union, said;

“Teachers are not opposed to accountability. However, what we are increasingly seeing is an accountability regime that is intrusive, disproportionate and which undermines the role of the teacher. The drive towards excessive data collection, without any meaningful purpose in some instances, does little to help teachers in their pursuit of delivering the best education system possible.

“Professor Donaldson, as part of his curriculum review, noted that the balance between judgment and support was skewed and what is needed is to establish accountability mechanisms that make a constructive contribution to children and young people’s learning.

“We know that the Education Minister in Wales has been supportive of the principle need to reduce workloads for teachers as well as empowering them to lead on issues such as curriculum design. For that to be achieved there has to be fundamental changes to the approaches of some local authorities and regional consortia.”

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Motion: TEACHER AND SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY IN WALES

Conference deplores the excessive accountability culture which hasdeveloped in Wales. Conference notes that this problem has been particularlyacute since the appointment of the previous Education Minister and thepublication of the last set of PISA results.

Since the establishment of the Regional Consortia, teachers in Wales havebeen under intense scrutiny. According to the Hill Report of 2013 Consortiashould cover a standard set of key functions to 'drive up standards'. Teachers'workload has increased substantially because of oppressive monitoring andevaluation policies. Teacher stress in Wales is high and has beenexacerbated by the obsession with school performance data derived fromseveral sources whose outputs are often inconsistent and occasionallycontradictory. Conference welcomes the abolition of banding but remains tobe convinced that school categorisation offers a fairer, more accurate andworkable system.

In addition to this, classroom observation is increasing and teachers are beingscrutinised inordinately.Conference notes that school leaders are being placed under increasedpressure to improve school performance with diminishing resources andinadequate support and this pressure is often passed on to classroomteachers, with consortium visits and monitoring often used as an excuse torequire additional work from teachers. Conference condemns the lack ofsupport for teachers and schools in the new consortium system whichfocuses too heavily on monitoring and challenge.

Conference condemns the ERW consortium in particular for seeking to takefor itself the role of employer and its failure for some time to engageconstructively with teacher unions.

Conference calls on the Executive to request the earliest possible meetingwith the Wales Education Minister to seek agreement that:

1. Union policy on monitoring and workload is adhered to;

2. The demands placed on school leaders and their teachers for dataanalysis and evaluation and the subsequent monitoring by consortiaare reasonable; and

3. The imbalance between challenge and support is urgently addressed.