ATL

Meet the President

Report meets up with Lesley Ward as she prepares to start her term as ATL president. Words by Alex Tomlin

You don't argue with Lesley Ward. Not because ATL's new president is particularly intimidating (possibly the last word you could use to describe her), it's that arguing just isn't her style. 

"I'm not a confrontational type of person; I think you can deal with most things just by sitting down and having a chat and respecting other people's point of view," Lesley explains. "I don't like being told what to do so I don't see the point in telling other people. You've got to persuade them and make them want to do it before they'll do it well."

Talking in the back garden of her Doncaster home, bathed in sunshine, Lesley tells me that she is looking forward to her tenure as president and is keen to visit branches and generally be involved. She is, in her own words, "naturally inquisitive".

Hailing from a seafaring community in Hull, Lesley first wanted to join the Wrens (Women's Royal Naval Service), but at five foot two, was not tall enough and would have failed the eyesight test. So she "drifted" into teaching in 1975, and still remains in the same primary school 34 years later. She intended to only stay for a year, but she found she really liked the school and, "when you start teaching the children of the first children you taught there's no point in moving."

A highlight of her career was telling a story in a literacy class and getting a round of applause from the children, while the truly great moments are "when the light goes on - when you've been teaching a pupil for ages and suddenly they get it."

She recalls school trips to see the elephants at the circus and letting the children play with hedgehogs that she let run round the classroom. The hedgehogs, incidentally, were looked after in the winter by Lesley and her husband who inform me that hedgehogs like dog food but under no circumstances should you give them milk.

The national curriculum sadly put a stop to circus trips and hedgehog handling, and also, in Lesley's opinion, favoured girls over boys. "It was a very feminine curriculum - girls learn better in a structure while boys learn from experience. That's why we have so many disaffected boys." She believes the Rose Review, however, will change things for the better in primary education. She relates teaching Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott to one class. "The girls all thought she was a tragic heroine. I asked one boy what he thought of her. 'Eh, Miss Ward, she were a right sad cow,' he said, and I thought, 'Yeah, she was really'."

Like the national curriculum, another significant change to the education landscape is the move towards academies, something that worries Lesley. "A school is not a business," she states, citing the example of Richard Rose Central Academy in Carlisle, which, in January this year, was put into special measures by Ofsted inspectors highlighting poor leadership, inconsistent teaching and an environment that wasn't safe for the young people being taught there. Lesley believes schools, particularly primary schools, operate better with strong local authority guidance.

Lesley's road to president was distinctly unplanned. Having left the NUT because she is not one to choose industrial action too quickly, she spent "a year in the wilderness" before joining ATL's previous incarnation, the Assistant Masters' and Mistresses' Association (AMMA). Her active union work started almost immediately when she went to a meeting with her neighbour, coming out as recruitment secretary.

"At a meeting the following year, I nipped to the loo, came back and was joint branch secretary," Lesley recalls. "At a meeting a few years later, I went to the bar to buy a round and came back to discover I'd been nominated for Executive. I never consciously started out to do anything, but it just grew." After being elected on to Executive, she was nominated to be chair of continuing professional development, and then put herself forward to be on general secretary Mary Bousted's selection panel.

One of her most rewarding roles has been as the head of the Defence Committee (which allocates funds to help members' legal cases), the first woman to hold the post. "You get a great sense of satisfaction from knowing those that we can help, we do help and we help extremely well."

All this sprang from that first meeting and Lesley believes meetings are a great way to get involved in the union. "We have fun at our meetings. If more people came to meetings they'd be pleasantly surprised how enjoyable they can be, especially if you've got a good speaker. And if they don't go to meetings because they think they're a bit staid, perhaps they should go along and change them into what they want them to be.

"Meetings give a sense of confidence because you can check what you think you know about your rights.
If you're not right, it's good you went, and if you are right then you've had it confirmed," she continues. "I've made some really good friends through ATL too and it all started by going to a meeting to find something out - and look where I am now!"

Besides more members going to meetings, Lesley would also like to see the growth of ATL's membership, particularly in Scotland, and the success of AMiE, ATL's partnership with the Association for College Management. "We've done very well with social partnership, where Mary Bousted and [deputy general secretary] Martin Johnson are listened to by government," she adds, "and I'd like that to continue."

With a potential change of government on the horizon, Lesley is keen to preserve that relationship and believes: "If a new government shows sense, it will carry on with the dialogue and with social partnership. I think there need to be more conversations with the Tory party for them to understand the modern function of a modern trade union. I'd tell them to listen to us, consider what we're saying. We do know what we're talking about and perhaps they don't know quite as much as we do about the delivery of education. It's got to be deliverable and tolerable."

ATL's knowledge of education is something about which Lesley likes to spread the word. When she joined the union, she was the lone voice in her school but when she moved to supply teaching after becoming junior vice president two years ago, there were 18 members there. This was largely down to taking ATL literature into school to help answer colleagues' questions.

"I think the quality of our publications is outstanding," she says. "I think it's because they're objective - not the union line. Ours tells you what you're legally entitled to, and here's what you can reasonably do to get it. You don't get anything by confrontation - you just put people's hackles up. Measured is the ATL way."

This is just one of the qualities that Lesley believes makes a good teacher, along with patience, a sense of fairness, willingness to take risks and being a good actor. "You have to act - when kids do something so ridiculous that you want to laugh and you can't or you've lost them," she explains.

"I once took off my shoes and left them by the side of my desk, then a boy in my class came up and was sick and filled them," she recalls. "He then said 'Ooh, I feel better for that!' 'Well, my shoes don't!', I replied. You've got to be able to see the funny side of things. And you need to know your subject inside out and be able to deliver it in an interesting way. You need to ham it up, be over the top with younger children," she concludes. "And you've got to be constant because in some areas you are the only constant in that child's life. Show the children you like them."