President's Address

March 2001

Its now nearly two years after the Secondary Review became a reality and the council began closing schools and moving pupils to the expanding schools. The whole experience, as born out by this years GCSE results has been traumatic, painful and catastrophic for teachers, pupils and parents alike. It gives us no pleasure to say 'we told you so'. We say it in the forlorn hope that our politicians will learn from the experience and actually listen to us and all the other groups of people involved with education who have direct experience of what it is like at the chalk face. It was a classic piece of bureaucratic bungling that need not have happened if those directly involved in education were genuinely involved in the decision making process.

Some of the problems created were a mismatch of GCSE syllabus expanding schools accommodation was overestimated. Some of the outcomes were a halving of achievement at GCSE level (Hamilton A-Cs went down from 27% to 13%) (interestingly the average for the pupils at the annexe at Mundela was higher that the main site despite a creaming off of most of the higher achievers to other schools. Increased truancy, increase in behaviour problems and some extremely serious incidents, an increase in assaults on teachers and much more.

Despite all this, our members have coped admirably but how much more can they/should they take? The National picture does not offer any comfort either. We have had new national curriculum orders, performance management OFSTED League Tables, Education Action Zones. I believe we are being faced with two different evils. Creeping privatisation and creeping Stalinism!

Privatisation because of EAZs, private sponsorships, mentors etc. Incidentally a policy maker at county hall said that the government was not bothered about teacher shortages because they are undermining teaching profession with non-teachers in the classroom. The electorate have less power to influence education policy but business influence is increasing.
I use the term Stalinism loosely and not very scientifically but I do feel that we have elements of Stalinism now built into the education system. Stalinism had five year plans, we have development plans. Stalinism had targets, we have targets, SATS, League Tables Etc. with the threat of OFSTED if a school does not achieve its performance indicators. So in the USSR factory managers cooked the books to make it look like they were achieving the targets. Of course, no school could ever be accused of minimising their truancy figures could they?

Educational Philosophy

This has been the most silent attack. The one that has provoked the least debate. What is education for? It frightens me that so many parents teachers and pupils accept that schools are simply training places for the world of work. To say that education should be about expanding minds giving young people a thirst for knowledge and to question perceived wisdom as tantamount to heresy and you risk being treated as a crackpot. But it is not all bad news. I believe we have the opportunity to make huge strides forward in our pay and conditions. The teacher shortage puts us in a strong bargaining position and Scotland has given us a 'benchmark' of what we should aim for. But nothing is guaranteed. We are strong and we are weak. We need to make sure our leadership does everything possible to support its members struggles against bureaucracy and its defence of working conditions. We can help our members realise their strength and have confidence to achieve success in our campaigns on workload and cover.

General Election

Many teachers voted Labour in the last election in the hope that things would get better only to find they got worse. I believe we should be debating alternatives to the traditional party that trade unionists have voted for and demand of them a commitment to defend comprehensive education and teachers pay and conditions.

Heather Rawling — March 2001