Presidential Address By Philipa Harvey - Nut Annual Conference 2015
I am proud to be a teacher. I have worked in Croydon schools since 1985 and for most of those 30 years I have been a primary school teacher. Like so many of you here I feel really privileged to have had the opportunity to work with so many interesting and inspiring young people and alongside so many amazing teachers and school staff.
I really enjoy being a teacher.
Nowadays when I am asked what I do I say with pride that I am a teacher. People often say that they understand it is a very challenging job. There is no doubt there are very many demands being made on us that make our workload frankly ridiculous. However the job of teaching continues to be a job that I always feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in doing.
My job/our job is actually awesome.
I have always preferred and aspired to work as part of a team of staff, children, parents and carers. I believe that it is as a team that we can do the best for the young people in schools. Because it is the school communities that I have worked in that have motivated me to be a classroom teacher and have enabled me to enjoy being a classroom teacher. And who until last week were part of my ever changing and extending family. They are the people that make me laugh and cry, with joy and sometimes sadness, and with whom I am immensely proud to be associated.
The privilege of being a member of a school community means that you take on a responsibility as well. A responsibility to provide the children and young people with the learning conditions that will allow them to take their place in the community.
To achieve this we all know as teachers that the young people we work with need to become independent, reflective thinkers who learn how to learn. We can enable them to explore their way to becoming discerning citizens.
As the poet Kahlil Gibran said,
“No man can reveal to you
aught but that which already lies half asleep
in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers,
gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise
he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom,
but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”
or as Albert Einstein is said to have said, “I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”
Or in my words “I am responsible for making learning joyful and fun so that it remains something people can do and want to keep on doing forever.”
I know that our Union and its members not only encourage this vision of education but make sure it is alive and kicking in our schools and classrooms.
When you hear the marvellous examples of work being done through the many workshops at the whole range of conferences we run it is clear that teachers are working to ensure that their pupils are getting access to quality education.
If I could share one example with you it would be a group of students from Redbridge who came to present to the LGBT conference. They explained to the conference how they celebrate LGBT history month in their school. They described how they plan and carry out a whole range of activities then reflect on their successes and develop them for the next year. They explained that they have taken over the running of the events so that it is now a student led celebration. They were also able to reflect on the impact that the celebrations had had on their school and the way it had enabled the young people in the school to feel empowered. They are clearly becoming responsible members of society with the knowledge and skills needed for life.
Education has enabled them to achieve a confidence and understanding of themselves and others, and their roles and relationships.
I would like to congratulate Michael Dance and all the other teachers out there that are creating this type of learning environment.
This activity also shows that we can engage teachers in the Union at many levels, showing them that the way into activism can be through their own experiences and concerns and through their engagement with the young people they’re so passionate about.
Teachers in our schools, NUT members in our schools, create these conditions for learning despite the obstacles that are placed before them.
As a teacher I know only too well the ongoing threats to the sort of education that we all value.
My own children, who are here today – adults now – are amongst the most tested young people ever. Having gone through SATs at every key stage they even had t shirts, the background a globe, proclaiming that they were indeed the world’s most tested children. Although young people in some states in the USA, unfortunately for them, seem to have taken up that reverse accolade.
And although the number of tests seems to be receding at some key stages, this is all smoke and mirrors.
How can a test that focusses on spelling, punctuation and grammar (out of context), a test that is taking the teaching away from being purposeful and meaningful towards teaching through drilling and exercising, be about learning to awaken possibilities? It becomes clear that we are actually moving to forms of knowledge that are more easily measured. More easily controlled. And this type of so called ‘teaching’ could probably be assessed and marked by a computer. Who needs a teacher for that? Because this is not real teaching.
How can the reliance on a single exam at the end of GCSE courses enable all students to demonstrate everything that they have achieved and understood? How can a single exam show their true potential?
How can a teacher justify telling a parent or carer that their child is failing when they are only 5 years old because they got 31 out of 40 instead of 32 out of 40 in a single word reading test? A test which relies on reading words using one strategy only.
And now teachers are going to be asked to waste more valuable teaching time, testing 4 year olds. And the particular crime here is that this is at a time that is particularly precious and valuable.
In their first few weeks at school, when children and their teachers need to be fostering a love of school and learning, and developing the relationships and conditions for this to happen, teachers will be testing children. Teachers are being driven by a testing agenda imposed on them instead of them being trusted to respond to the learning needs of the individual children that they are teaching and no doubt assessing.
This is going too far. It is up to us to make sure that we are telling everyone that this is outrageous. The more people who know the problems that standardised testing inflict on our children the more will speak out against it. We can build alliances and partnerships around these issues that could increase our influence and power and therefore we must do so.
We need to be saying that there is no benefit to be had from all this testing.
Not to the young people we work with.
Not to the teachers who have to shape what they teach and how they teach.
And not for our society which needs creative, adaptable, resilient citizens.
So why is it that the education minister is side-lining the very subjects that foster such skills?
This may give you some indication. It is an extract from Nicky Morgan’s speech to the 2015 BETT Show when she was talking about how technology could transform the educational landscape.
Unfortunately she did not begin by inviting teachers to explore how to develop technology so that it could be used to inspire learners to investigate an idea that has captured their imagination, or solve a problem that will set them challenges that keep them on the edge of their seats.
No, on the contrary, her first priority for how technology can be used to transform education was to transform the way teachers and schools can become accountable!
So much so that in the future data could be tracked and then, I quote, “…..we could try to link qualifications to tax data too in order to demonstrate the true worth of certain subjects.”
Technology should not be used to shut down but to create.
With the wondrous possibilities that technology offers just imagine what our young people could create for our futures.
I am speaking to you today as your president but I am also a teacher, a resident and a constituent in Croydon. For me working in Croydon will be little different than the experience that you all have as teachers. We are part of the communities that we work in. These are living, learning communities that are steeped with history. We hope that we play our part in enabling the members of our communities to thrive. We celebrate the success and value the diversity in our schools. The schools that we work in are vital organs in our communities. So when there are not enough schools in the places where they are needed, then there is a problem.
We have this problem in Croydon. We don’t have enough school places. We are not the only place facing this travesty. Our issue is not with our council; it is not with the heads and governors who have expanded their schools to welcome children and their parents into their school communities. Our local issue, an issue that this national Union shares, is that the locally democratically elected councils do not have the legal power to plan and provide enough school places in their own local area. In the area where they are responsible for educating young people, in the area where voters have elected them to be responsible for educating these young people.
David Simmonds, Conservative chairman of the Local Government Association's Children and Young People Board, said: "Mums and dads rightly expect their children to be able to get a school place and councils and schools are doing everything they can to provide this, in some cases going to extraordinary lengths to create places.”
He said: "We are calling on the Government to commit to funding the creation of school places and hand councils the powers to open new schools, for both primary and secondary-age pupils, before time runs out."
He identified that a lack of money and red tape was hampering councils from being able to ensure there were enough places in time for the children who need them in the places they were needed.
This is not good enough!
No child should have to travel past a school before reaching the one they attend.
The answer is not the free schools and academies that seem to be this Government’s answer to everything.
I hate to think how much money has been lost to the free schools that have been opened and closed already, the free schools that have been planned but not even opened, the salaries being paid to principals who never took up posts, salaries that most of us can only dream of by the way.
Barely a week goes by without another story appearing in the media related to an academy that is in trouble. The academies programme is letting education down. We need to provide our young people with a good role model of leadership and in fact the whole issue of money and academies is frankly outrageous.
The millions of pounds that has gone to private companies as a result of outsourcing services.
The millions of pounds sitting in reserves. The money gained from companies that are being run from some academies and free schools.
And what of the evidence?
Here are three findings from a recent Education Select Committee Report:
1. We have sought but not found convincing evidence of academy status on raising attainment in primary schools
2. We have found no evidence of any benefit for schools which are already performing well by converting to academies.
3. The evidence that The London Challenge was a successful approach to school improvement is overwhelming. It cost £160 million over 3 years compared to £8.5 billion spent on the academies programme over 2 years.
After ten years still no evidence. They even gave up looking for WMD after 10 years. Perhaps it’s time to accept. It’s not the governance label on the school that makes the school successful but the collective work of the teachers and the children who attend it.
At a time when there is a predicted teacher shortage there are many ways that those millions of pounds could be used to support our current teachers and students. Teaching could then be a job that people will flock to, rather than a job where apparently 85% of the teaching workforce have considered leaving.
But this is not the only way to tackle the problems that are leading to teacher shortages.
It is imperative that teaching is reclaimed by the profession, for the profession. We should be given the autonomy to teach what we recognise is right for our students. We should be able to teach in conditions that make this a job we can do effectively. Then the frightening fact that teacher recruitment is now at a ten year low could be reversed.
This would make a real difference but improvement in teacher recruitment in itself will not be enough.
Finland, acknowledged internationally, as being educationally effective recognises, this. They rate their teachers highly, allow them autonomy in what they teach, and give them access to continuing CPD. They also have recognised the relationship between school effectiveness, good outcomes for pupils and an equitable society.
In Finland value is placed on narrowing the gap between different income groups leading to greater equality and cohesion in schools.
Whereas here, schools are now considering how to poverty-proof themselves so that the children they teach do not feel isolated and stigmatised.
This current government is responsible for a massive increase in the number of children living in poverty.