ATL

Dr Mary Bousted at ATL Conference 2007

As the 2007 conference kicked off, Dr Mary Bousted general secretary of ATL addressed Conference on the issues most affecting education today.

Well, it's the end of term isn't it? It's been a long term - 10 years since those early days trailing clouds of glory as he came. Education was the top priority, and if priorities can be measured in terms of frenzied activity then Tony Blair deserves 10 out of 10. His time in office as prime minister has been marked by a policy overdrive which has been unrivalled since the beginning of state education. And the onslaught is still continuing.

In the course of the next year teachers will have to implement a revised Key Stage 3 curriculum; prepare for radical change in the 14 - 19 agenda, with the introduction of specialised diplomas; successfully manage the A level changes; provide better support for looked after children, and gifted and talented children; and will be under pressure to change their approach to the teaching of reading. In the medium-term all primary schools will have to offer a modern foreign language; they will have to implement intensive support programmes to ensure that every child is a reader by the end of Key Stage 1.

The pace is no less fierce in further education. Colleges have an equally challenging role in the implementation of the new 14-19 diplomas and they are key to ensuring that all young people between 16 and 18 have a training or education place - the so-called "September guarantee". Colleges will also pick up most of Lord Leitch's proposals on adult skills and economic growth.

And the policy frenzy is not limited to traditional educational topics - schools are at the centre of a vortex which sucks in a whole range of society's ills and worries. They are foremost in the fight against childhood obesity, and they are to be at the centre of the fight against social exclusion through the extended services agenda. And last, but not least, teachers and support staff must 'personalise' learning for pupils - I'll come back to this later.

The policy onslaught comes as a result of the prime minister's imperative that no child should be left behind because of social disadvantage. This is an entirely laudable ambition, and one which ATL fully supports - as, indeed, we support many of the measures I have listed above. ATL knows very well that in real terms education has done very well out of the public purse. We should not forget that between 1997-1998 and 2006-2007 in real terms funding per pupil has increased by £1,440 - an increase of 47 per cent. And schools have delivered results because of this greatly increased funding. Ofsted states that teaching and learning is satisfactory or better in 95 per cent of state schools.

The government's drive to build better schools and to demonstrate, physically, that young people matter enough to be educated in buildings that do not leak, are not falling down and smelly, is testament to its belief and commitment to the ideal that every child really does matter. (And if anyone says that surroundings do not matter - I can safely say that no independent school that I have ever been to has not highlighted the excellence of its facilities and the state of the art ICT suites, performing arts studios and sports halls). Buildings and facilities do matter - and this government has improved them greatly, and continues to do so, in the state sector. ATL applauds this endeavour and supports its aims and its effects.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Tony Blair has shown a serious commitment to education - and not only to the well-being of children, but also to those who teach them. It was his government which was the first to be prepared to admit that teachers were suffering from an excessive workload and, rather than ignoring this issue as previous Conservative administrations had done, it was Tony Blair's government that was prepared to sit down with the teacher and support staff unions, and the local government employers, and to do something real and concrete to make things better.

The National Agreement on Raising Standards and Tackling Workload, which was negotiated through the social partnership, was a landmark not only for the detailed contractual rights it conferred on teachers, such as the limit on cover and the provision of PPA time, but also because it sent out a message to those school leaders who needed reminding (as, unfortunately too many often do) that teachers have rights as well as responsibilities. And don't forget that the pay of classroom teachers has increased by around 10 per cent above the rate of inflation since 1997.

But while teachers can look back over the past 10 years and see the positive changes this government has made, and its continued commitment to education, can we really say the same for school support staff?

Compared to 1997 we now have twice as many support staff employed in schools, as well as the introduction of relatively new roles such as higher level teaching assistants and cover supervisors, all working alongside teachers to help them and enhance the learning of pupils. Support staff contributed a great deal in 1997, but ten years on it is now as inconceivable to imagine a school without support staff as it always was to imagine a school without teachers.

So, as teachers have had pay increases significantly above the rate of inflation and contractual changes to reduce their workload, support staff have had their roles enhanced, their contribution increased, but, in most cases, their pay has stayed more or less the same. And why is that?

I sometimes wonder if these issues are deliberately over complicated, so I'll say it using the most straightforward language.

Teachers have national pay and terms and conditions - support staff don't.

It's always been the case, but has now become acutely obvious, that most local authorities have failed support staff for years and years, leaving them at the bottom of the pay scale with scant regard for their skills, abilities and expertise. We have a conference motion later this week about local authorities and schools who are deliberately ignoring the national advice on the deployment and employment of cover supervisors and higher level teaching assistants, which is yet another example that, in this case, devolution doesn't work.

It's time things changed.

Two years ago Ruth Kelly addressed this conference and said for the first time that the government would have to consider this issue. Two years is a long time in politics, but it's even longer when you're in a job that you love, which makes a massive difference, and which is vital in helping to raise standards, but are paid so poorly that you can barely afford to carry on doing it.

I met Alan Johnson two weeks ago and did not hold back in expressing our members' views about the current position. The fact that support staff are predominantly female should have put this issue at the top of a Labour government's agenda, especially one committed to equality. Alan is coming to speak to you on Wednesday, and is expecting us to ask the question we always ask education secretaries - when is there going to be a national pay scale for support staff? I'm sure you will be interested in his reply.

But its not just support staff who are languishing in a vacuum - so are local authorities, schools and colleges. We now have a confusing mess of schools - community comprehensive schools, foundation schools, grammar schools, Trust, Academies - Heinz 57 varieties - all with different models of governance, all with different relationships, if any at all, with the local authority. Colleges will be subject to "contestability" - that ugly word which means that the private sector can get its hands on the lucrative skills market.

No rational argument has ever been put forward for this mix without much match. We have been asked to accept a belief as a truth - as we often have been asked to believe by Blair - that the involvement of the private sector will raise standards of education. There has been, and there is, no evidence that this is the case.

And it's not just pupil results which are in question. The marketisation of the education service through trusts and Academies also impacts on effective school organisation and the ability of the local authority to do its job. I was talking recently to a director of a very good urban authority. He told me that area school planning is virtually impossible, because any school facing closure due to falling roles and school rationalisation, can simply threaten to become a Trust and take itself out of the local planning function altogether.

The confusion surrounding types of school, and their relation with the community and with local democracy, extends to all the other areas of government policy. I've got a new name for this approach to policy making - it's not strategic or even blue skies - that's old hat now. I think we need a new term to describe the current approach to policy making - I call it the 'pick and mix' approach!

Through 'pick and mix' you can have any type of school you want, run any way you want - never mind the evidence that in such a diverse system the schools pick the children, rather than the other way round and that the most disadvantaged, socially excluded children, those without the parents with the income to move house, or the knowledge to navigate the selection process, are left without choice and without access to the 'good' schools, in which the social mix of the pupils would create greater opportunities for their success.

Through pick and mix you can have excellence (high stakes testing) and mix it with enjoyment (a full and rich curriculum)! Well, hold on a moment, can you? Anyone with any sense knows you can't. Recently a primary school head teacher said to me that it is a pretence to suggest that in year six classes the period from September to May is spent doing anything other than test preparation.

The QCA itself admitted two years ago that teachers in year 6 classrooms routinely spend over two hours a week, in addition to the literacy hour, preparing their pupils for the literacy test at Key Stage 2. This is not education, this is training - and the consequences are catastrophic. They lead to a period of exhaustion, not only for the teacher, but also for the pupils who are route-marched through to level 4. We know that real learning does not take place in boot camp year 6 classes.

We live with a paradox. We have, in England, one of the most data-rich education systems in the world. The DfES now has national data which describes, in detail, the progress of pupils from foundation through to GCSE. This data describes the percentage of pupils who make the expected levels, the percentage of pupils who stay still, and the percentage of those who regress.

The problem is that the data is used only to describe, not to analyse the problem, debate the cause and reach a conclusion that will really improve things. We know things need to be improved. We agree with the government's conclusions that progress has slowed at primary level; that too many pupils don't make good progress at Key Stage 3; that not enough pupils get five A* - C including English and maths. We are acutely aware that Britain is the poor man of Europe for staying on rates post 16.

But we do not agree with the government's solutions to these problems, which is, essentially, to do more of the same - more testing, more pressure, more high stakes accountability structures. And we ask the question, if they haven't worked so far, why will more of them do any better?

And now I'm going to really do a first. I'm going to quote Jeremy Clarkson - not a commentator with whom I have a great deal in common. But even he, the nnonsense, gas guzzling, eco-unfriendly TV presenter and journalist has cottoned on to the problem. He wrote, in an article entitled 'Schools are trying to break children' (The Sunday Times, 19 November 2006):

"I suppose we all think, rather naively, that school today is exactly the same as school back in the 60s, apart from the fact that children are now allowed calculators... 'Fraid not. School today is completely different. There's very little bullying, and no smoking behind the bike sheds because there's no time; not when you need to be fluent in 17 languages by four and you've got those pesky quadratic cosines to finish off by break.

"What's changed is simple. We now have bloody league tables, a handy cut out 'n' keep guide to how well the school performs. Well forgive the expletive, but that's bollocks. Printing a list of 'best schools' purely on the grounds of academic achievement is as idiotic as printing a list of 'best foods' purely on the ground of calorie content. It tells you nothing."

Blimey - Mary Bousted agreeing with Jeremy Clarkson! It's a first! And it's interesting that Mr Clarkson is not alone in expressing his trenchant views. Last summer there was a rash of letters and articles in newspapers, written by less famous parents, protesting against the exam pressure their children were put under, lamenting the loss of enjoyment in learning, the narrowing of the curriculum, the sense that nothing mattered - the pupil, their progress as learners, their enthusiasms, their personalities. All that mattered was the test result - and as we know, that is highly likely to be inaccurate anyway.

ATL led the inter-union debate on testing, which highlighted the inadequacy of the current system where data is used for too many purposes. No one test can give reliable individual pupil-level data, school data and national data - the different uses to which the tests are put means that the data is corrupted in each case. We know that in a high stakes testing regime, such as we have at present, between one-third and two-fifths of the kids will get the wrong grade. We know that when retested in year 7 over 25 per cent will not maintain their level 4 - because they were never really at a level 4 in terms of deep knowledge and skills. They have been forced over the level 4 hurdle, coached and coaxed into test performance.

ATL agrees with the government that assessment for learning should be at the centre of effective educational practice. The concept is simple (but far from simple to implement) and it is, essentially, that assessment of a child's progress should inform what they are taught next - so that they are set clear, personalised goals and their progress towards these goals is carefully monitored. The focus in not on the finishing line, but on the journey to increased understanding and skill. Such an approach, if implemented, would achieve one of the government's key targets - to narrow the achievement gap between different groups of pupils.

But the government can promote assessment for learning as a 'good thing' for as long and as loud as it wants. It will not take root in a system where teacher assessment counts for nothing, either in the performance league tables or in Ofsted judgements of a school's effectiveness. To make something happen, you have to make it count. Assessment for learning counts for nothing in the high stakes accountability regime, and because of this it will be honoured more in the breach than in the observance in schools in England.

I've just mentioned Ofsted. Now I'm faced with a dilemma. Should I hurry on and try to ignore the spectre at the feast, or should I face its awful presence directly?

I am going to be brave. I am going to admit an awful truth. I am going to admit that the driving force behind what happens in schools in England today is not the government, it's Ofsted. Ministers can exhort the system at length to do any number of things, but their words are wasted, lost in the ether, unless what they want is included in the Ofsted inspection framework. The Ofsted inspection process shapes the forms and content of teaching and learning in our schools. It drives the education system at every level.

Teachers fear and loathe Ofsted because of its slash and burn approach - airlift in the inspector, pore over the school level data, have a cursory look around, come to a judgement and then airlift out, leaving the school to pick up the pieces. But the problem doesn't start and end just with the inspection. You will remember (because, of course, you remember all of ATL's policy positions) that we were a lone voice in exercising caution about the new inspection regime.

We asked the key question - how can schools move from an inspection system in which every hair of every head in each school was examined, lessons graded, parents questioned - a boots and braces inspection framework - to a 'light touch' inspection framework based on self evaluation? We warned that any move from one to the other needed careful consideration, full preparation and time so that the full implications of the change could be assessed. Of course, our caution was not heeded - the system switched and, I am afraid, our worst fears have been realised.

For the simple truth is this. Schools have not enjoyed a lessening of the inspection burden. In the misnamed 'light touch' inspection system that we have at present, schools impose the burden of inspection on themselves - unrelentingly. And the stress and bureaucracy is booming. I know of secondary schools where each head of department has to fill in all of the self evaluation forms (SEF) - adding a huge, and completely unnecessary extra workload to their already heavy burden.

Then local authorities get in on the act. Many have created huge bureaucracies to monitor schools before, after and in between Ofsted inspections. School effectiveness units send in the shock LEA troops through monitoring and intervention teams, to count every hair on the head of the pulverised teaching staff whose pupils are below local and national targets. Schools which are deemed in danger of being put into special measures, or given notice to improve, are targeted for the intensifying support pilot, where they are required to set individual pupil targets in maths and English, which are assessed every six weeks.

This level of pressure and prescription is taking its toll. One branch secretary has written to me. He tells me: "The pressure for staff is enormous, and I am constantly offering casework advice to lots of them. Many never recover from illnesses associated with anxiety symptoms as they are dragged through competency and other procedures. They are targeted, tainted and lost to the profession forever."

So it's not just the inspection which matters, it's all the paraphernalia that goes with it. Schools are in a constant frenzy of inspection pressure - either preparing for, recovering from, or moving towards the moment when the inspector calls. And for what? What does Ofsted do to improve our education service? They don't even get it right! Since the introduction of the light touch inspection, nearly 50 per cent of the challenges made by schools have been upheld. Ofsted need to apply their own inspection methodology to themselves - and admit that if they did, they would be in special measures!

Let me be clear, I am not arguing that teachers should not be accountable for their work. I am not arguing that schools should not be accountable for their standards. The age of the secret garden of education is long over - and we should not regret its passing. A major public service such as education must be publicly accountable to the state, to parents and to pupils.

But, at present, we have a confusing mess of accountabilities. Teachers have performance management - and the new system, negotiated by ATL in social partnership, has the potential to transform teacher professionalism. Teachers also have pupil performance targets. They have school self-evaluation. They have, or soon will, a school improvement partner. They have oversight by local authorities with new duties to intervene. They have the disciplinary procedures of their employers, and the GTC, and the Secretary of State. They have ministers breathing down their necks with the constant pressure of league tables. And they have Ofsted.

This needs to be sorted out. And I think ATL knows how. The new school improvement partners (SIPs) are the key. With slight modifications to the role, the SIP could monitor a school's performance, but with an understanding of its circumstances, unlike Ofsted. The SIP could provide practical support for improvement, but also advise the local authority on any intervention that may be needed.

Conference, in my view this makes Ofsted inspections of schools surplus to requirements. Ofsted could take a break from persecuting schools and teachers. There would still be lots for the agency to do, including monitoring data and surveying subjects and themes, but by cutting out duplication we would be saving the government lots of money, and teachers lots of unnecessary stress and unproductive workload.

This development of Ofsted is overdue. It will free schools to do the good things that the government says it wants - and which ATL wants too - such as a quality broad and relevant curriculum which takes account of the prior learning and experiences of pupils, and is tailored to the motivations of different learners; schools which are highly strategic, with good teaching and learning and high trust relationships between all partners - parents, teachers, the local community and government.

But an over inspected, over accountable system will not deliver these good outcomes. It will instead deliver the outcomes on which it is measured - and the measured outcomes will drive what happens in classrooms up and down the country. The government has to realise that its good intentions are not enough. It has to recognise that its own policy objectives are being stifled and suffocated because of the current accountability structures under which schools are buried. If the government wants to change the way we educate children in England, it has to provide the means to achieve the ends.

ATL has a large and varied membership, and the issues it addresses are not confined to the state sector. We have over 20,000 members in the independent sector, and talking to those members it is clear that work life balance remains their number one concern. Last year, we developed the work-life balance toolkit for teachers working in the independent sector. The toolkit has been extremely well received by members and by many heads, and, indeed, employers - I know from my meeting with the director of the Scottish Council of Independent Schools.

So why has it been so well received? Well because the toolkit doesn't just highlight a problem, it provides practical suggestions to assist staff and employers tackle the problem. To give but one example, staff and management at St Josephs Convent School, in Burnley, used the surveys on workload and administrative support to identify the need for proper PPA time and one afternoon per week was agreed.

The toolkit is a good example of ATL's commitment to working with employers and preventing problems. We believe that prevention is better than cure. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. Last month ATL members in an independent school took historic action by going on strike for a day in support of a well-respected and long-serving colleague who had been summarily sacked on the last day of term. Sacked with no warning; no legal procedure; and no good reason. We won't read anything into the fact that it was the principal's last act before leaving the school!

ATL worked strenuously to try and resolve the issue, while a parents' action group passed a motion of no confidence in the governors, and pupils demonstrated their support for their teacher. Unfortunately, the school governors refused to listen to reason. Our members could not condone the poor treatment of their colleague through inaction.

I am proud of our members' principled stance taking this very difficult action. It is a sign of their professionalism, comradeship and determination.

Independent school employers are not above the law. They cannot just break contracts of employment and deny basic justice, such as the right to a defence. So let us be plain, while ATL will always seek conciliation, we will not stand for our members being treated unjustly.

With no national agreements on terms and conditions, it is important to ensure that independent schools have reasonable contracts of employment and objective, consistent and timely policies and procedures.

And, so, thank goodness for your union, ATL. We will not be bounced. We will not be seduced. Our policy goes to the heart of the matter. It is forward looking. It asks the essential questions, and we are not afraid to come up with conclusions, which sometimes even we find uncomfortable. Just look at the work of members developing policy on three key issues which have dominated the education debate this year. ATL does not duck the difficult issues - we tackle them head on.

Those of you who were here last year will remember the impassioned debate we had on faith schools. I have never seen the front rows so full of delegates with views they wanted to express on this most contentious of issues. So, after Conference, the Executive approved the formation of a specialist task group to look at the role, purpose and effects of faith schools in our multi-cultural, multi-faith society.

The policy position, which has resulted from the democratic processes of the union, was agreed at the last Executive meeting. In essence the statement argues that faith schools, funded overwhelmingly by the public purse, should be under a key duty to promote social cohesion. Their admission arrangements and their curriculum should ensure that the risk of segregation is minimised, and that their pupils have knowledge of, and contact with, other cultures.

Faith schools should not adopt restrictive admissions practices which make them unrepresentative of their local community. They should not be allowed to discriminate in their employment practices against candidates from other faiths, or none. But neither should community schools be faith or culture blind - many have a great deal to learn from those faith schools which demonstrate their knowledge of, and respect for, the cultural diversity of the pupils within them.

This is your union, ATL, putting forward considered, evidenced policy which takes into account the wide range of passionately held views within the union. And our policy on faith schools has already had significant effect. In her first interview as the new Church of England head of education the reverend Jan Ainsworth has supported ATL's requirement that faith schools account for how they promote social and community cohesion.

She states: "We are very committed to promoting community cohesion." And she adds, "I am in favour of all schools publishing an annual audit of what they are doing to promote it." This immediate response to ATL's position statement demonstrates clearly the importance, and the influence of a proactive, productive, powerful union, ATL, generating evidence-based policy.

We have also turned our powerful lenses on the vexed issue of school leadership. Our policy position paper on effective school leadership argues that effective leaders have the improvement of teaching and learning as their principal focus and core function.

And, rather than the current 'in vogue concept of 'distributed leadership' (which to us looks rather like 'dumping jobs on those less fortunate and lower in the school hierarchy than yourself), we argue for shared leadership in schools which is 'not a top down benevolence, but an expectation of, and entitlement for, every member of staff, teaching and non-teaching to exercise leadership.'

Which recognises that 'even the newest and least experienced members of staff have not only a view but also areas of expertise that can be utilized to support school and colleagues' development.' And I must say, honestly, that if more school leaders really exercised (rather than preached) shared leadership, there would be a great deal more happy schools in this country, and much less of a leadership crisis.

You will remember last year that we debated the school curriculum. Martin Johnson, ATL's acting deputy general secretary and its head of education, has just completed, with colleagues in the education department, a book on the curriculum which is trenchant, radical and progressive.

The school curriculum goes to the heart of our conception of ourselves as a civil society. We define the values and the aspirations we hold, collectively, through what we choose to teach our children. This is why debates about the curriculum are always impassioned, always heated, and always difficult. Because the issue is so complex, politicians (who want to keep things simple) have, for too long and far too often, opted for the easy way out - locking the national curriculum into a subject-based mould which was outdated in the 19th, never mind the 21st century.

The consequences of this approach should be cause for alarm. Young people in Britain walk away from full-time education when they reach young adulthood, and they do not return.

The challenge, therefore, is clear: How do we develop a curriculum which will engage the interests, the minds, and the aspirations of the current and future generations? To meet this challenge we cannot go down the usual routes either of looking forward to a rosy past (the favourite option of the politicians), or meddling round the edges (the favourite option of the civil servants.)

ATL, the education union, does not shirk from this key debate, nor does it believe that half measures will do. We are radical because we believe that things are so broke they cannot be fixed by half measures. We need to do things differently, and to do better, if we are to prepare young people for a world in which what is known to be true changes by the hour.

That is why we advocate a skills-based curriculum. One which is focused on the physical skills, the communication, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and the thinking and learning skills which will be essential components of the educated person who is able to think and act effectively in the 21st century.

Such a curriculum would, of course, develop skills through content - but the subject content of this curriculum, and its organisation, would not be decided by civil servants in Whitehall. It would be designed by teachers, working locally with each other, in their communities, to engage the interests and develop the abilities of their pupils.

This approach would accomplish two important things. First it would raise educational standards because we would have classrooms in which pupils were highly engaged, motivated and successful. Second, it would re-professionalise teachers who would be given the authority - and the responsibility - to develop curricula (a key professional skill which has been taken from them as a direct result of the national strategies).

And to come back to where I started, ATL is saying all these things, not as an opponent of the government, but as a partner. ATL knows that you cannot divorce education from the political arena. ATL is not affiliated to any political party. We support any government's education policies on their merits. That is why we support this government's funding of, and value given to, a public education service. We support this government's record of putting its money where its mouth is. We support this government's realisation that it is the school workforce which is the means of achieving the best for learners, rather than an obstacle to it.

Our policies say to this government, your heart might be in the right place, but you're going about some things the wrong way. The standards agenda, driven by spurious data, can take you no further. You will be under mounting pressure from the critique of current assessment. Results are flattening and international comparisons won't look good. Unrest from disaffected youth will continue to hit the headlines. You rely on still more data, but still lack the analysis.

That's why you need ATL, the education union, the leaders of the education workforce. Our policies are based on a day-to-day understanding of the experience of pupils and students. Our policies deal with their real needs, and the needs of 21st century society. I say to the government: have the courage to abandon centralist imposition where you know it does not work, and instead invest in workforce development and a new accountability. And I say to the government, you cannot afford to ignore ATL. Our collective wisdom is a resource which we are now tapping - a resource which empowers us to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable.

That is why ATL is the education union and that is why ATL is growing - growing in influence, growing in profile and growing in membership. That is why more members across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are joining up to ATL, joining in with ATL and getting on with ATL. The most important people in ATL are the ordinary members who are getting active within the union. I'm not going to talk for them - let them speak for themselves.

Wasn't that inspiring? I am sure that it has lifted you into this conference, here in Bournemouth. We are here to set ATL's policy direction for the coming year. It is a serious job we have to do. Having been to four previous conferences, I know that you will do it well.

I am very proud to be general secretary of ATL. I am proud of the work we do together to help each other. I am proud that we take the lead. I am proud of the work of our Executive committee, our branch officials, our union learning and health and safety reps, and our professional staff.

Together we do a great job. Together we are strong. Together we are ATL, the education union.