1. Conference, Honoured Guests:
It is the greatest privilege of my life to be able to speak to you as the President of the
NASUWT, the largest teachers union in the United Kingdom, so I must begin by
thanking you, the people who voted for me two and a half years ago, for giving me
that privilege. The two years I have spent as Junior and Senior Vice President have
already been the most exciting and rewarding of my career and I am confident that
this Presidential Year will top that. I have already enjoyed visiting Northern Ireland
and many parts of England and I look forward to receiving invitations from Local
Associations in Scotland and Wales.
I must also thank my colleagues in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes
who placed their trust in me as National Executive Member and encouraged me to
stand for office: without their belief in me and the support they gave I may never have
had the confidence to take this step. I shall be forever grateful to them.
I must also thank my school, Banbury Academy, and the then Head, Fiona Hammans,
for their support in putting myself forward for this role, and Oxfordshire County
Council for allowing me half-time facilities release
And I must pay tribute too to former President, Colin Abraham: I was fortunate to join
him on the staff of Vincent Thompson High School in Exeter in 1977 and saw that
this union, my union, was led by teachers, working in ordinary schools, doing the job
of teaching just like everyone else. He made me realise that my union was something
I could play a real part in, shaping its policies, joining in fighting for what was right,
creating positive change for teachers and, thereby, the students we taught.
But most of all I need to thank my parents, who instilled in me moral principles to
guide my life: honesty, justice, equality, compassion and forgiveness. They
committed their lives to helping others, running a local authority Children’s Home
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2. and caring for over 300 children during their 30 years service and set me on my path
serving pupils with special educational needs. The friendships I made with this very
extensive family persist to this day and I am delighted Kris Hallett can be here today
to represent that family. Like many rival siblings, Kris and I fought – metaphorically
and literally – for my mother and father’s attention. My advantage when we fought
was not so much my blood ties but the fact that she had the disadvantage of
possessing long plaits! I am immensely proud of the service my parents gave to
society, for the good they did in so many young lives; and we, as teachers, can take
pride in our service too. But is it not a disgrace that this wretched government takes
no pride in us.
Colleagues, you will all remember the slogan: “If you can read this, thank a teacher”.
It is undoubtedly true. It was used in a speech last September, and the speaker thanked
the teachers who’d given them the life chances they now enjoyed.
The speech went on “…there can never have been a more important time to be a
teacher. (True) Teachers hold in their hands the success of our country and the
wellbeing of its citizens; (Absolutely correct) they are the key to helping every child
in this country realise their full potential (no question about that). Teachers are the
most important fighters in the battle to make opportunity more equal (Right again).
Teachers are the critical guardians of the intellectual life of the nation (Probably).
Teachers give children the tools by which they can become the authors of their own
life story and builders of a better world (Undoubtedly). It is teachers, not poets, who
are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind”. (Slightly flattering, but probably
right). The speech went on “I want to defend teachers – and teaching – from the
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3. critics and cynics. …there are attacks directed at teaching – and I want to fight them”
(Thanks very much!)
You might be wondering who offered this paean of praise to teachers. Perhaps our ex-
President, Mick Lyons? Not him. Then our General Secretary, Chris Keates? No.
Ah! Then it must be our Deputy General Secretary, Patrick Roach – all that rhetorical
skill. Again no.
The speaker goes on to say who is attacking our profession: in his parallel universe
the attack is coming from Chris Keates and Patrick Roach.
But in his criticism of Chris and Patrick he says that the figures we cite about teacher
morale come from a ‘self-selecting sample of our members, unrepresentative of the
profession as a whole’: so the views of teachers in the largest teachers union in the
UK are, by his assertion, unrepresentative. You have to admire the chutzpah of the
man. When he wants to find evidence to support his claims, Michael Gove, as we
know, goes to professionally derived data for his assertions, as he did when he
claimed that nobody remembers history any more. To arrive at this conclusion he used
data derived from polls carried out by those well known and internationally respected
polling organisations Premier Inns and UK TV Gold. He would have hidden this
embarrassing fact, but a Freedom of Information request forced him to come clean.
But did he apologise for basing his attacks on the teaching of History on self-selected
data, unrepresentative of the truth?
This trick of ‘rubbishing’ the data he doesn’t like he deploys quite frequently. In the
same speech he says at one point “In the past , the education debate has been
dominated by education academics – which is why so much of the research and
evidence… has been so poor” and describes academics he doesn’t agree with as
“vested interests”. But elsewhere he says “An overwhelming body of academic
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4. literature shows…” “…impressive scientific evidence” and an “educationalist… has
proved”. As teachers we would challenge this sort of evidence selection when done
by our students in presenting an argument, so we have both a right and a duty to
challenge the Secretary of State in the same way. We must uphold the highest
standards of intellectual honesty with our students and politicians.
So are we wrong to think that he is such a threat to the teaching profession and the
world class education system we have here in the United Kingdom? Have we been
deluding ourselves? Have we been led astray?
Colleagues, you will be aware that Michael Gove has sent a personally signed copy of
the King James Bible into every school in England, so let’s put aside the Secretary of
State’s rhetoric and examine his record, for, as it says in the King James version “by
their fruits you shall know them”.
So what fruits has Michael Gove brought forth?
No child in state funded schools has the right to be taught by a qualified teacher. In
21st
Century England, Michael Gove has removed from children the right to be taught
by a qualified teacher. I can barely believe I’m saying this. Michael Gove has
removed the first level of quality control within our profession but thinks he’s
defending education by doing so; and the people who are trying to protect the right of
children to be taught by a qualified professional, they are attacking education: it’s a
wonder Alice Through the Looking Glass is not a compulsory text for GCSE
Literature. Still, we must be grateful he’s not Secretary of State for Health and doing
the same for dentistry, or we could be going for an extraction to find the local
blacksmith leaning over us to perform the operation. After all, he’s strong enough to
be able to pull the tooth out, he knows how to grip a pair of pliers and he’s cheaper by
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5. far. Or you could find yourself in hospital with appendicitis to discover the local
barber stropping his razor…. Colleagues, unregulated, unqualified people have
performed many public services over the centuries, but in no other profession than
education has the person whose role it is to make educational policy sought to
advance the profession by turning the clock back to a previous century. By their fruits
you shall know them.
Colleagues, we know we need to look to the future, not the past; to anticipate the
future needs of the children we teach, not hanker for the old certainties .
The NASUWT is proud of the contribution made by our members and by all teachers
in securing educational provision throughout the whole of the United Kingdom that is
among the best in the world. But, shamefully, some politicians, especially the current
Secretary of State, choose to cherry-pick data to criticise public education whilst they
try to chase the same prize – being top of the international league tables, a trait that to
some degree afflicts all Education Ministers across the UK. And in their desperate
quest they have brought in punitive inspection systems which have led to a narrowing
of the curriculum, over-prescription and tick-box accountability regimes.
But colleagues, my greatest achievements as a teacher of pupils with special
educational needs were achieved despite all this, not because of it. Leon is a case in
point. When Leon arrived at my school for a preliminary visit at the end of Year 6, as
soon as he got through the door he shot under a table and cowered against the wall.
When my expression of surprise registered with his TA she commented that Leon had
spent most of his Primary years under a table, kicking out at anyone who tried to get
near him. I bent down, smiled at him and beckoned him out with my index finger.
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6. When he emerged I extended my hand and said, “Hello Leon, my name’s Mr Branner.
Would you like to sit here next to me?” I instantly knew the root of the problem, for
Leon possessed a unique and challenging fragrance. Ill-looked-after, he had been
shunned by his peers for 6 years and had retreated into isolation. He was in danger of
5 more years of rejection. Leon could neither read nor write, but his individual
education plan did not start with those skills: something more fundamental needed to
be put in place first, and with the help of a wonderful TA, the late Mary Thomas, we
provided him with the means and opportunity to keep himself clean, with complete
changes of clothes, and taught him how to use the school washing machine to launder
them himself. With those essentials in place the astonishingly caring nature of Leon
emerged. We taught him to read and write and, via work experience, he got a job and
he’s still in gainful employment.
Where does that fit in the lesson observation tick list? Under what section of an
Ofsted Report is such an achievement celebrated? Colleagues, real education has
always been about more than 5A*-Cs including English and Maths. It’s about giving
our students the tools by which they can become the authors of their own life story,
and each student needs their own, individual and sometimes different set of tools.
Only we, qualified and professional teachers, can provide that; not here-today, gone-
tomorrow politicians. As Keith Bartley, the former Head of the GTC and later Chief
Executive for the Department of Education and Child Development in South Australia
told me in December, “We should measure what we value, not value what we
measure”. The current accountability regime only does the latter, and in doing so it
sells our profession short.
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7. Despite the intense workload created for us by the attacks on teachers’
professionalism, and by deregulation and privatisation of our schools, we must set our
sights firmly on the bigger picture. We must ask ourselves: What does the educational
world need to look like if we are to maintain world class schools? What is the
philosophy that should underpin the provision of public education in this country?
What are the purposes of a public funded education service? What should be the
future of education in the United Kingdom beyond the Independence Referendum in
Scotland and the next General Election? And we answered these questions and
expressed our vision in last year’s report to Conference, “Maintaining World Class
Schools in the 21st
Century”.
Education is a human right established in international law and public education exists
not just for the benefit of the individual but also for the good of society in its widest
sense.
The UNESCO commission on Education for the 21st
Century said, “while education is
an on-going process of improving knowledge and skills, it is also – perhaps primarily
– an exceptional means of bringing about personal development and building
relationships among individuals, groups and nations.” Public education is not just
about developing an individual’s capacity to earn, it has a moral objective as well – to
tackle inequality. Public education must be about more than providing for the most
able – it must be about all. Our view as members of the NASUWT is that the moral
purpose of public education is grounded in the public service ethos, in social justice,
equality and democracy.
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8. But whether education alone can overcome the malign effects of poverty, poor
housing, neglect and abuse in all its forms is questionable.
Like many of your schools, my school, less than 15 miles from David Cameron’s
constituency home, has to provide a free breakfast for a growing number of our
students, for without this the first food to reach their bellies would not arrive until
lunchtime, which for us is 1.30 in the afternoon. As teachers we know that a hungry
child cannot concentrate on his or her learning: the brain needs fuel to operate
properly. Children who come to school too tired because their bedroom was so cold
they couldn’t sleep properly, they can’t concentrate properly either. We, as individual
teachers, can do little to control or ameliorate such factors, though I know that many
of us do what we can – bringing in food, spare clothing, and other resources to give
practical help to those children in greatest need. But the Government could and should
do more instead of giving priority to a policy of tax breaks for the immeasurably
wealthy.
The Coalition Government, in freezing school budgets and attacking teachers’ pay
through freezes or below inflation increases and via the pension tax on the grounds of
austerity, talk about the affordability of public education. Meanwhile, the rich are
getting richer. Professor Joan Benach of Barcelona University in Spain has found that
the 400 wealthiest US Citizens have the same wealth as the whole of Africa; and the
richest 1% of the world’s population have the same income as the 4.3 billion poorest.
Whilst politicians show greater concern to protect the obscene wealth of the very rich
than ameliorate the poverty of the most disadvantaged, we will not take the decisions
necessary to being greater equality and fairness to British society.
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9. Colleagues, we teachers love teaching – as survey after survey shows. But our
profession and our professionalism is attacked daily; our commitment to our students
is publicly derided for short-term political headlines. But despite this we go into
school every day, determined to do our best for those we teach. Parents know this and
we enjoy their confidence and support.
The Government needs to trust teachers too. Children and young people learn best
when the teachers are given the time, resources and scope to make the fullest possible
use of their professional talents.
5 Years ago I was invited to join my current school by its Headteacher, Fiona
Hammans, who had got to know me and appreciate my passion for serving the less
privileged members of our society. Fiona trusted me and allowed me to use my
professional judgement to assess the special needs of the school and to plan and
implement my programme to meet those needs. Language impoverishment was at the
root of much of the poor behaviour: our students had been taught how to ‘bark at
print’ but their reading comprehension was weak as a result of a very restricted
vocabulary. We developed “Intensive Literacy Programmes” which, in 3 weeks,
delivers an average improvement in reading comprehension of 10 months. Our
students feel their progress; they become more engaged in their learning; they reduce
their ‘acting out’; and they achieve greater academic success. Now, 5 years on, the
school, which had been struggling to meet the floor targets, is now one of the top 10
schools in Oxfordshire. I don’t claim that success as my own: teaching is a team effort
and we all rely on the work done by our colleagues. But because I, and other
colleagues, were given the time, resources and scope to make the fullest possible use
of our professional talents we made, and continue to make, a real difference.
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10. Respect for the professionalism of teachers is a hallmark of an education system that
is genuinely committed to raising standards and extending educational opportunity for
all pupils.
Research shows that it is the teacher’s contribution that matters most to pupils’
learning. By putting teachers first NASUWT recognises that the effective engagement
of teachers and school leaders is critical to securing high standards. This means
recognising teachers and headteachers as co-leaders of teaching and learning,
promoting professional collaboration and collegiality at all levels.
Under this Coalition Government teacher morale has dropped and continues to
decline. As I’ve visited schools and Local Associations this year I’ve heard accounts
of teachers afraid to voice opinions, afraid to take risks, afraid to exercise their
professional judgement in case it exposes them to criticism. This malign atmosphere,
which is tainted with the breath of Ofsted, is not one where innovation can flourish
and progress can be made: as in my own school, progress is made by allowing
teachers to exercise their professional judgement and in treating teachers as fellow
professionals.
We need to move the profession away from the simplistic box-ticking culture imposed
on schools by the way the current Inspection regimes operate, towards a culture where
recognising the need for self-improvement doesn’t lead to career destruction; where
improvement can take place in a supportive environment that excludes words like
‘failing’; where you can ask for help without it being a sign of weakness. We need to
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11. return to a collaborative approach where we offer help to our colleagues and receive it
from them in our turn. We need collegiality.
There is a lot we as teachers can do to affect students’ attitudes, motivation, progress
and achievement – and we do so daily. I think Steve would acknowledge that it was
partly my belief in his ability, re-iterated to him in his own home in front of his
mother and step-father (just as he was about to muck up his exams) that helped him to
return to learning in his early 20s, with a reference from me, to get into Exeter
University to study law and pass out with the prize for the best student of his cohort.
He became a Barrister and now has a law practice in the South-West. This sort of life-
changing mentoring takes place in schools throughout the country by dedicated
teachers: it’s just what we do.
But there are wider issues which must be considered too. Only a small proportion of a
child’s life is spent in school – about 23% of each year. And students are not immune
from the counter-influences they receive during the 77% of time they are not in
school. I remember Martin, one of my ‘rough diamonds’ and slightly more rough than
diamond, dropping into school one evening as I was running the Adult Education
Centre. He sat down but kept glancing anxiously out of the window to look at his
dozen or so ‘friends’ who were waiting, somewhat impatiently it seemed, for him to
re-emerge. After making conversation for about 5 minutes he got up and said, “I
suppose I might as well go and get my kicking” and went back outside. He was
pushed to the floor and his friends began to put the boot in. As I went out to try to
rescue him one of the group shouted, “Let’s get Mike”, at which Mike shot off,
pursued by the gang, for it was now his turn for a kicking. And Martin followed the
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12. crowd! Colleagues, it was this experience that made me realise that my nice, middle-
class conduct and mores were going to have a struggle to overcome the peer pressures
on Martin from his gang; that I was not working in isolation from the society that
Martin belonged to, but that his society was always going to look at me and what I
stood for through a somewhat distorting lens. It is the invaluable work done by our
colleagues in Youth Clubs and similar institutions that has a powerful impact on
groups such as Martin’s. Yet many of these centres, which previously provided
services that were highly complementary to the work of teachers are being closed and
their demise will impact on what we can achieve in school.
Colleagues, I am immensely proud to have spent my life working with pupils with
special educational needs, serving those most disadvantaged in life’s competitive race.
Like you, I have broken the poverty cycle for many of my students and in the process
enriched their lives and saved a small fortune for the country. Wouldn’t it be great if,
just for once, Ministers could acknowledge our contribution, congratulate us on our
achievements and say “Thank You”. Then I could exercise the last of my guiding
principles, forgiveness.
But until then colleagues, we need to remain resolute in our determination to bring
about honesty, justice, equality and compassion in Education.
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