Last weekend was the 2016 West Midlands regional conference to debate and discuss motions for National Conference, and I simply cannot believe it has been a year since the last regional event, this year has gone so quickly.

As such on Friday 4th November I headed over to Shakespeare’s home ‘Stratford Upon Avon’ to meet with colleagues from all over the region, (If you need a recap of the purpose of regional conferences see my blog regarding last years event).

The conference was to be held at the Crowne Plaza right by the river Avon – a very nice hotel!

Continue reading “West Midlands Regional Conference Nov’16 & ‘lifting the cup’ aka winning a regional award!” →

Being an immigrant myself and having lived through the late 70’s and early 80’s and experienced first-hand some of the tensions that being a immigrant  in a ‘alien’ neighbourhood brings I thought the dark days of examples such as below, had long passed.

However having worked in many West Midlands schools & witnessed first hand examples of the tensions that currently exist between ‘local residents’ and new migrants to the UK in my area, I noticed a worrying trend leading up to the ‘Brexit’ vote and post this referendum of ever increasing tensions and hostilities.

Continue reading “My Social Enterprise visit to Hungary ’16” →

I arrived to this conference with a simple question:

Where is all the work at?

I felt like Yosser Hughes from the ‘Boys with the blackstuff’ with the phrase ‘gis us a job’

Having not worked since Mid July I had found myself unemployed for 2 months, and the Supply Agencies advising me it was slow, ‘the supply market’. My feelings were quite different, the supply teachers market, had been slower than an asthmatic snail after a particularly bad asthma attack!

Continue reading “Supply Teachers Conference – 17th September ’16 @ NEC Birmingham” →

It is hard to believe, that in amidst a major recruitment crisis in teaching, where numbers of people joining the profession is plummeting and the levels of teachers leaving the profession is soaring, the Government’s response is to threaten to deport foreign teachers (Non EU only) if they do not earn £35, 000 or more.

If we set aside the argument of a crisis in teacher numbers made by the various Teaching Unions (as they are biased in the eyes of the Government) and look at cold hard data & facts from independent sources, the figures are alarming:

Ofsted outlined the concern in 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11285171/Ofsted-warns-of-looming-teacher-recruitment-crisis.html

Continue reading “In times of a recruitment crisis We send home the foreign teachers!” →

Towards the end of last month (28th March – 1st April) the NASUWT National Conference was held in Birmingham & at the wonderful ICC, as I had been elected to attend with other colleagues from Telford earlier in the year on the Friday morning of the 28th I headed into Birmingham on the Tram & checked in to the Hyatt Regancy Hotel which is connected to the ICC via a bridge!

Sad as it seems I really enjoyed walking over that bridge every day from the Hotel to the Conference Centre.

Friday afternoon was registering as a delegate for the Conference & registering my children for the crèche, so straight away I improved on last year’s conference when I bungled the crèche booking!

Continue reading “National Conference 2016 – Birmingham” →