‘BME’ Conference & having a Guinness with the President.

Over the weekend I attended the ‘Black, Minority & Ethnic Teachers’ Conference in Birmingham as my role as Equality Officer for Telford & Wrekin.

Over the last few years this conference has grown in size from being a small conference to the largest ‘Special Interest Group’ conference that our union organize with over 400 delegates attending at the weekend, there is even talk of moving it to the ICC next year as 1,000 delegates could have attended if there was space/facilities.

It is now the largest BME Teachers conference in Europe!

The key theme of the weekend was summarized by the hash-tag:

#ActForRacialJustice

The keynote guest speaker was Bonnie Greer who gave an impassioned speech/talk on how society has evolved but racial equality has not kept pace. You can check out her comments and the reaction to her speech from her Twitter A/c.

Our Gen Sec: Chris Keates then spoke about how workers rights in the UK have diminished to such an extent under this Government that the UK’s rating on the International Trade Union Confederation scoring system is rated ‘3’ out of a possible ‘5’ (with 5 being the worst score a country can achieve) We are now ranked alongside Russia whereby ‘Workers Rights are regularly violated’

Which is appalling when you compare the UK against our near European neighbors such as France, Germany & Italy all scoring a ‘1’  this being a score of ‘irregular violations of workers rights’

For more reading on this visit:

http://survey.ituc-csi.org/United-Kingdom.html

Patrick Roach then completed a real time polling of delegates which reflected the level of discrimation & inequality,  Outcomes of the real time polling taken by Patrick Roach can be located  at and the findings were shocking:

http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/Whatsnew/NASUWTNews/PressReleases/NASUWT_015007

For example, the real time poll reflected:

• A third (32%) do not feel their views are listened to or welcomed, and a further 10% feel isolated and excluded at work;
• Around four-fifths (84%) don’t feel that schools and colleges treat BME pupils fairly and support them to fulfil their potential;
• In the last 12 months 73% of BME teachers said they had witnessed or been subject to racially derogatory views or behaviours from pupils, parents or colleagues;
• 7 in 10 (70%) do not feel that progress is being made in ensuring BME teachers are treated fairly when applying for jobs or promotion;
• Only 28% believe the problem of racism and racial prejudice in schools and colleges is taken more seriously than when they started their teaching career;
• 70% feel that BME people living in the UK are rarely or never treated fairly.

After lunch there were various CPD Workshops with topics ranging from:

• Key leadership Skills
• Race Well bieng & Success
• Inspections
• Meeting the duties of Fundamntal British Values

These were well delivered, informative & useful free) CPD opportunities, I attended the British Values workshop which helped me appreciate and discuss the issues when delivering this within SMSC lessons.

Overall it was a fantastic conference, which offered great networking opportunities, superb & insightful  guest speakers, excellent workshops and the even the chance to have a Guinness with the current NASUWT President Graham Dawson

who  talked to members during the social event on the Friday night regarding his year to date as President, which was enjoyable and interesting to learn of his travels & duties during his Presidency.

Here’s hoping that the energy that was visible during the whole weekend translates into

#ActForRacialJustice