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Welcome
Alice Robinson is president of ATL
By the time this copy of Report has arrived, Christmas will be fading into a distant memory, with the decorations taken down and stored safely away until next year and another term started.
Some matters from 2011 cannot be forgotten, however, like the day of action on 30 November.
Reports of the day came flooding in thick and fast from around the country. I have to take some of these reports on trust, but I am reliably informed that John Lennon was carrying an ATL placard in Liverpool and that Mary Bousted addressed the masses in Manchester (at least one of those is definitely true). The march in London had an estimated 25,000 taking part, but it was not just the metropolis that saw the action. There were rallies from Dorset to Lancaster, from Cardiff to Edinburgh. The atmosphere was universally described as positive and the feedback from all was that the police and the public generally were incredibly supportive. I am not sure where Mr Cameron was during the day, but the one thing I can tell him from the education sector is that it was not a 'damp squib'.
By the end of the day I had become more relaxed about interviews; I still don't like them and my knees refuse to stop shaking until the camera is turned off. The more I explained the injustice in the proposed changes the more the interviewers were astonished by the changes that were being proposed. One aghast young interviewer from Paisley said: "Imagine having a 68-year-old PE teacher."
I must take this opportunity to pass on my thanks to all those members who took part in events on 30 November, including for the first time members in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and support staff across the UK; also the branch secretaries and committee members who helped to organise the events locally and to the ATL staff who coordinated events.
There are many other interesting articles in this issue. The article relating to the changes to the Ofsted framework makes interesting reading, especially for those of you in schools awaiting the 'visit'. And the article by Karen Pickering on the 'power of sport' may prompt you to start thinking about an activity for Sport Relief on 23 March.