So 2016 has rolled around & after a Christmas break (which by the way I find is the least relaxing holiday of the various half termly breaks) I find myself back at school.

No-one is happy to be back after the seasonal holiday, the nights draw in early, its cold & everyone is flat/miserable. Many children find themselves with coughs & colds and schools become incubators for germs.

Added to which the Year 11’s start to panic and so more revision sessions/catch up sessions etc are requested by the School’s leadership team, which add to an ever increasing workload.

By early January parents are keen for their children to get back into some normality & routine that school life brings (which I agree with as a parent myself) but it feels like all the ground rules &  behavior policies I have tried to consistently employ within my classroom have been forgotten and so this term is a hard slog reestablishing myself & my expectations.

This term for me anyway has been even made more fun by the school I work in has found themselves a new Principal, who is very keen to make his mark!

( I am sure I will write more of my new Principal during the year.)

All of which mean that this half term & up until Easter is always the hardest and with many year group parents evenings added into the mix, I always try to keep my head down & plough on through the term.

The one silver lining is that during this long slog of a term, various ‘Special Interest group’ conferences begin, leading up to National Conference, and now for a quick recap:

A Special Interest Group:

‘Is a community within a larger organization with a shared interest in advancing a specific area of knowledge, learning or technology where members cooperate to affect or to produce solutions within their particular field, and may communicate, meet, and organize conferences’.

NASUWT Special Interest Groups:

In no particular order, other than alphabetically these are:

• BME (Black, Minority & Ethnic Teachers)
• Disabled Teachers
• LGBT (Lesbian, Gay & Transgender) Teachers
• Supply Teachers
• Women Teachers
• Young Teachers (Teachers under the age of 30)

Each have their own specific conference or consultation seminar, where members who identify themselves come together to create a platform to share experiences, network, gain some much needed CPD & request the Union works on specific areas of interest to that specific special interest group.

At each of these conferences or consultation seminars (I have no idea the difference) the members elect a small group, usually 4 – 6 people to act as their ‘Advisory Committee’ who then take the points/issues raised at the conference to the Union & its Executive Body.

Special Interest Groups Conference Dates:

•  BME (Black, Minority & Ethnic Teachers) – 3rd Dec ’16
• Disabled Teachers – 25th June ’16
• LGBT (Lesbian, Gay & Transgender) Teachers – 13th Feb ’16
• Supply Teachers 12 March ’16
• Women Teachers 15th Oct ’16
• Young Teachers (Teachers under the age of 30) – 23rd Jan ’16

Attending these conferences is simple, simply ask your local division, or email:

conferencesandevents@mail.nasuwt.org.uk

Depending on what dates these conferences fall on, the issues discussed at these events feed into the wider National Conference which is held late March every year.

NASUWT National Conference 2016

Is from Friday 25th March until Monday 28th March & this year it is being held in Birmingham, the same process for attending the Special Interest Group conferences applies to attending National Conference.

So Busy, Busy, Busy…..

Over the last 10 months I have been the Equality Officer (see earlier blogs) for my Division, and so I have within this role attended most of the Special Interest Group conferences and National Conference. I hope to be doing similar this year.

I hope to see you there & please keep following the blog

Happy New Year..

One final point – for every blog I intend to add a video with some educational link (sometimes it might be quite tenuous)

‘No dark sarcasm in the classroom’

Mark Twain once stated that there are “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” which are used to bolster one’s argument.

Blog Statistics

However in a manner that Mark Twain himself would of approved of, I am publishing the statistics of my blog (see attachment at the end of this post.)

In the 9 months since I set this blog up (my first blog was on the 4th March ’15) there have been over 1,000 visitors to the site, many are repeat visitors which now actively follow the blog & use their smart phones to get updates, 63 people have contributed to discussions/debates & commented on various posts.

And pleasingly these contributions have come from members all over the country from Northern Ireland to Cornwall & from Scotland through to Norwich.

I am delighted that the blog has been so well received & reviewed by those who matter the most – the members who it is written for.

I wanted to offer colleagues an opportunity to get updates on what our union is doing through a light hearted ‘Social media platform’ & the feedback is that many members now follow the blog through their SMART Phones & enjoy the informal approach of posts, which sit along side more analytical posts, such as the recent post on the true cost of Supply Teaching.

My Oscar Speech

Setting this blog up would not of been possible without the support of many people, my Division Sec. was supportive from the first discussion we had back in March when I advised him I wanted to create a blog, as have the whole Telford & Wrekin Committee.

Don’t worry I am not going to cry…….

Getting the blog to a wider medium would of been impossible without the support of the Union’s Training Dept. who kindly shared the blog details at various Equality events throughout the year  & it was great to see the visitor number spike after every Equality event with people visiting & commenting on the topics posted.

And finally thanks to everyone who has visited the site, read the blogs, contributed and left comments.

But don’t worry there is more to come & big plans for the blog next year (teaser alert) and to quote Winston Churchill

‘This is not the end, its not even the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning’

All that’s left to say is have a great Christmas & see you next year!

Blog statistics, highlighting visitors to the various posts.

stats

‘Schools spending £1.3bn on supply teachers as staff shortage intensifies’

Recently the Guardian newspaper published an article on the growing cost of school’s employing supply teachers, (see hyperlink) within the UK Education system. The article highlighted these shocking facts:

‘Official government figures published last week shows spending on supply teachers – who are called in to cover in the absence of a member of staff – has gone up by almost £300m over two years, with the average amount spent by academies and free schools rising by 42% in a single year’

“As a result, half of all schools had unfilled positions at the start of this year and are being forced to turn to unqualified staff, temporary supply teachers, non-specialists and larger class sizes to try to plug the gaps.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/dec/14/schools-spending-billions-supply-teachers-staff-shortage-labour-analysis

The Government & Its juxtaposition – the story of Two Ministers:

This is even more shocking when you consider the Government’s policies on Education compared with Health-care.

Let us begin with Jeremy Hunt.

Earlier this year when speaking about Supply Agencies in the NHS he stated:

‘The government has announced measures to clamp down on “rip-off” staffing agencies used by the NHS to plug gaps in nursing and doctor rotas. It will set a maximum hourly rate for temps and cap the amount trusts that are struggling financially can spend.

Now in fairness Ms. Morgan was unfortunate to inherit the role from the most  disliked Education Minister in living memory, Michael Gove, who did more to unite teachers from all the various teaching unions against his policies in 5 years that all previous Education Ministers could not so in the last 100 years.

However Nicky Morgan, when talking about Teaching as a profession and the teaching recruitment shortage, which is being plugged by Supply Teachers and Supply Agencies, had this to say:

“Teaching is a hugely popular career with more teachers in England’s classrooms than ever before and record levels of top graduates entering the profession.

“The quality of teachers in England’s schools is at an all-time high and there are now more teachers in the classroom than ever before … 

“We are reducing unnecessary workload for teachers, we have protected the schools budget and we have given heads the freedom to pay good teachers more.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/teacher-supply-agencies-searching-as-far-as-canada-and-singapore-to-plug-staffing-gaps-10408272.html

By stating this Ms. Morgan is refusing to even acknowledge there is a Teaching shortage and this shortage is being exploited by Supply Agencies.

Which Brings us to the true cost of Supply Teaching in our schools:

•  The cost to schools budgets to cover supply teaching has increased by £300m to £1.3b
• Supply Teachers pay is falling from on average of £110 – £130 per day to £80 – £90 per day in the last 3 years.
• Supply Agencies are posting record profits
• More Supply Teachers are highlighting that they are struggling to find work, or survive on the levels of pay & are forced to visit Food Banks.

So who are winning & who are losing?

The Winners:

One such Supply Agency enjoyed a turnover of more than £22m for the year to July 2000, the last period for which accounts are available.

The company’s pre-tax profit was £74,815, but the accounts reveal that the three directors, Teresa Seabourne and Ian Penman – who are a married couple – and Christopher King, shared £1.8m in pay and pension contributions.

Ms Seabourne, the managing director, earned £454,000, slightly down on her previous year’s pay of £536,000. But the drop was compensated by the increase in her pension contributions, from £60,000 in 1999 to £255,000 in 2000.

The Losers:

Sadly over the next 3 to 4 years unless there is regulation to the Teaching Supply Agencies market I can only see the levels of monies Supply Agencies taking from School’s budgets increasing, the levels of qualified teachers leaving the profession also increasing and the standard of teaching that our children receive dropping.

• How has it come to this?
• How have we let it come to this?

Now never more urgently than ever before we need to defend our profession from these ‘rip off agencies’ and from this Government.

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

Over the weekend I attended the West Midlands Regional Conference where with people from all the divisions in the West Midlands we came together and discussed & debated the motions we as a region wish to put forward to National Conference next March.

(A motion is a formal way to propose a statement outlining a proposed area of work or research or lobbying that a Division wish the Union Leadership to pursue over the next year)

It was held just outside Warwick so this meant a sharp departure on Friday after school to get to the hotel by 5pm,

and as with everything I have attended so far, the hotel/facilities the Conferences Team selected were superb, it was a first class hotel.

After checking in and meeting my colleagues from Telford & Wrekin we headed to the Reception to socialize with friends from other regions & catch up, as mentioned in previous posts I feel the networking/socializing aspects of these events are just as important and allow members a chance to catch up, it is this, plus the opportunity to bring partners & children that make the union feel so welcoming and  ‘family-like’.

My wife & children couldn’t attend this weekend, but I was speaking with a lady who had two children registered with the free crèche, who told me, when she advises the children she is off to a conference they want to immediately know if they are also attending as they LOVE the crèche. ( I have experienced similar with my two children)

A pleasant evening ensued with Key note speakers Paul Nesbitt & the General Sec. Chris Keates talking about recent developments in Education and the challenges facing both the West Midlands region and the Country in general.

This was followed by a lovely meal and disco and a great evening was had by all!

Sadly we woke up to the news of the Paris Attacks & so at the beginning of the Conference ‘Fred Brown’ our Junior Vice President, the chair of the conference called for 2 minutes silence/reflection for those sadly affected by the events in Paris.

After this we got down to Conference business, the previous night everyone got to vote on the order of when the motions were heard, the motions ranged in subject, but the most popular motions to be discussed were:

• Workload & Work Life Balance (brought by the Birmingham Association)
• The Future of Teachers Terms & Conditions of Service (Wolverhampton)
• Insidious Performance Management Practices (Solihull & Coventry)

Each motion was outlined by the proposing Division then discussed and finally voted on, with a open forum for members to discuss their opinions on the topics.

I engaged with each motion & voted as I felt after hearing others views on these topics, after lunch I put a card in to speak on a motion, these being motion 25  covering – Supply Teachers.

However I felt the motion needed amending so my Division Sec. requested an amendment requesting that…

‘Conference calls upon NASUWT to organize local training for supply teachers so that they can access such training without financial loss’

I called for this because as discussed at regional supply teacher seminars not enough Union courses are at weekends thereby forcing supply teachers to choose between working (and earning) or attending training. After speaking on this matter and hearing other views I was pleased to see this amendment passed.

I enjoyed the discussion and debate on the range of topics and voting accordingly, it is this engagement, involvement and participation I enjoy and the feeling in some small way I have contributed to the work the Union will carry forward next year and that collectively we are stronger!