As the new president of ATL, what's your number one priority?

Mike Moore:I want to get a new general secretary! We are currently looking for someone to fill the post. By law, we have to have an election and the process won't complete until March next year. But although it does take a long while, and it is expensive, we're determined to find the right person.

What is your role as president of the ATL?

Mike Moore:My role is basically one concerned with public relations. I attend conferences and events and to address our members and talk about the ATL's policies. I attended the TUC conference, and will also be at the party conferences in the next few weeks. I enjoy public speaking and representing the ATL. I am also going to visit 30 to 40 branches of the ATL and so I'll be talking to them, explaining about the ATL.

My mission this year is to encourage our members to say No. To ask why are we doing things. In primary schools in particular, teachers need to ask questions, to ask why and to question their workload. I want them to get their heads to realise that they've got to get a life. This culture of teachers working over 50 hours a week for all of term time and some of holiday time. When you take out the amount of time that teachers put in at weekends, the total time worked by teachers is the same as everyone else but its concentrated.

What is your response to the accusations that A-level results have been deliberately downgraded?

Mike Moore:I've been a GCSE examiner since 1986 so I have a deep understanding of the exam system. I am very surprised and disappointed that it appears that someone high up has interfered with process. When we grade candidates we compare the standards of the paper with the previous year and decide whether it was harder or easier. We then look at the mark they got to get certain grades, so they base the grading on criteria. We never ever had a quota of students reaching certain grades, so I'm very disappointed that a certain percentage of students could get a grade A. It's not fair and after all, when teaching gets better and we understand the exam system, we expect an improvement in student's results each year. So I'm disappointed that someone along the line has interfered with the grading system.

Teacher workload has been an issue for teaching unions. Are teachers being swamped in paperwork?

Mike Moore:I am married to a primary school teacher and have been in the same secondary school for 35 years. Virtually all my friends are teachers, and I listen to what they have to say. Without a doubt, they are suffering. Since the introduction of the National Curriculum ten years ago, and the introduction of computers - you'd have thought computers would actually make things easier but all its done is generate more paperwork - people now expect you to write down everything that you are planning to do, what you actually do, and then a resume of what you've actually done.

So the introduction of these factors have put onto teachers a really large volume of work in terms of the planning, the preparation, and materials for use within the delivery, and then assessment and then reporting. So each lesson now is far more involved than it ever used to be.

When I started teaching in 1968 I had five classes for maths and my head of department gave me a book for each year. I had five books and 36 chapters to cover in a 30 period so it was approximately one chapter per week. Teaching was much more simplified. These days we have a much stricter National Curriculum which tells you what you have to teach and what you can't teach. And the planning for all of that is so much more involved.

Added to that is the fact that more than 50 per cent of the teaching workforce is 45 years of age or older. A large proportion is over 50 years of age. Five years ago teachers were looking to retire when they were 50 to 55. Now they're not looking to retire until they are 60 and so we've got a large proportion of the teaching force who have got no career prospects - when you get to 50 years of age, you're just marking time until retirement. So they've got no incentive to stay in the classroom apart from a love of the job and they're finding the workload particularly hard to deal with. Once you become that little bit older it becomes harder to energise yourself.

The government also puts forward a myriad of initiatives - at least two or three a year. The government is well meaning, but they involve an awful lot of work. When I started teaching the bulk of education took place outside of the classroom - it was talking to kids in the yard, taking them to football training and on trips. Now, most teachers do not have the time and energy to do these sorts of things. These sort of social activities allowed the teacher and the pupil to interact and to develop a relationship. All we see now is pupils working in an exercise book or on computer.

I told David Miliband this week that teachers are now expected to produce high quality intensive lessons all day long. But can students take all this in? Especially when you factor in breakfast clubs, lunch clubs, after school clubs and homework. At the DfES, you have a group of people working on key stage 3, some more are looking key stage 1, and others are looking at citizenship. The problem is they are missing the whole picture, and they do need to see the impact of their plans.

What do you think of teachers over the age of 50 having to learn to use computers for the first time? Is it good that they learn or does it just add to the workload?

Mike Moore:I have been an IT teacher since 1974 but my wife is just not interested. Even now she only does what she wants to do. She daren't sit down and work with new programmes and the majority of teachers are like that. A couple of years ago we had funds from the New Opportunities Fund to help train teachers. Each teacher was given the equivalent of a £400 voucher for training. This training was just for using the computer in the classroom, but the basics weren't included. This scheme cost £250 million and most of it was wasted.

There's probably more people working in the DfES now than ever before and the end product is not as effective and not as successful education for Britain's kids. If I had kids likely to be going to school in the next ten or 15 years, I'd be asking who's going to be teaching them and how they're going to be taught. Because over the next ten years half the present teaching force is going to disappear - that's 200,000 teachers. That means we need 20,000 teachers coming into the profession every year. At present we've got about 15,000 and 40 per cent of them don't stay. So in effect we've actually got between 8 and ten thousand. This means that lessons are going to have to be delivered by people who are not as well qualified and certainly not as well experienced as the present teaching force.

Added to all of this is Estelle's belief that teaching is a short term career, lasting about eight to 10 years at most. She's totally forgetting that it is only after five years that teachers really get into their element - kids accept them and they have the necessary experience. Where are we going to get the heads of department and the deputy heads if teachers stay for less than ten years?

The Association of University Teachers, whom we are associated with, claim that the most able people have got to be teachers, and they are quite correct. If you haven't got the most able being teachers then you can't produce people who continually get better.

What do you think of the government's record on education?

Mike Moore:Their heart is certainly in the right place - and the ministers in the department have got a real care for the job. But they've also got political ambition. Actually David Blunkett bucked the trend because he stayed as education secretary for the full length of the Parliament, and it looks as if Estelle is going to be there for the entire Parliament as well which is very unusual. Previously, one of the problems was the ministers only stayed for about 18 months so there was no stability.

But at the same time, Estelle has got to justify this very large team of people and this very large budget together with Tony Blair saying "Education, Education, Education". So she's got a lot of pressure on her. Speaking as a teacher, a parent and an educationalist, Estelle is missing one very important point. The government looks at standards in education as numeracy and literacy. Everything else is ignored. But they're forgetting all about social behaviour, forgetting about arts and creative subjects and that is really important.

If I was a shareholder in MFI I'd be really worried because our kids today don't know how any basic DIY. I'm very worried that the National Curriculum, which started under the Tories, has not been cut back enough by Labour. Its going to have to change because we're not giving kids a well rounded education. Where are the entrepreneur's of the future going to come from? Those sorts of skills are not being developed. They're trying to produce clones - everybody will be exactly the same because they all reach the same level. Education should allow individuals to develop at their own level and this isn't happening.

What is your response to the reports that Estelle Morris calling for head teachers to set pay levels in accordance with local living costs?

Mike Moore:It depends on the income for the school. I teach in Salford and my school currently has 1300 pupils and is the biggest in the local authority. We have a fair amount of money but we need a lot of staff. If you teach in inner London, then you're going to want to pay the staff very high wages because you can't get teachers in those schools.

The question then I have to ask is why should schools in Salford have their teachers taken away from them to be put into inner London because that's where they earn more money. The kids in Salford deserve an education just as much as the kids in London do.

If schools can vary their wages then that just leads to more competition and Estelle's big campaign at the moment is teachers working together and trying to encourage more partnerships between schools. And we can't because we're competing to get pupils into schools and we're competing in terms of examination results.

For some reason, there are some schools with lots of money and others don't. The standard spending assessment is so uneven that it just really causes problems.

The government always seems to be preoccupied with schools and teachers - do you think lecturers the poor relation?

Mike Moore:The situation in Further Education at the moment is absolutely appalling. I think the way in which successive governments have treated FE is the biggest educational disaster of all time. A lecturer in FE can't expect to earn more than about £23,000 which is almost a starting salary for teachers these days. Therefore the government is undervaluing the education of 16 to 19 year olds. The bulk of those are in vocational courses so the government is saying that vocational courses are not of the same value as academic courses and that is just wrong.

We need engineers, painters and plumbers desperately. Although they can earn good money, there is no inducement for colleges to be able to employ a plumber who can lecture because that plumber can earn more plumbing. Therefore where are the plumbers, roofers and car mechanics of the future?

I'm a former careers adviser - I really enjoyed advising kids on a one to one basis and helping them in the right direction.

What do you think about parents being given the choice of sending their kids to whichever local school they choose?

Mike Moore:I can't say that I'm totally, utterly devoted to comprehensive education, but I am a big fan of a fair opportunity for all. What happens is that certain schools attract the more able pupil and so therefore they become more popular so they attractive even more able pupils. And so we end up with schools for the less able and schools for the more able. So we are streaming our schools because of this policy of selection. I think that local comprehensives should be able to cater for all types of pupils.

The other reason why I'm against selection is simply because the amount of travel caused by kids travelling about before school - some of whom are travelling about 8 to ten miles across the city. Quite often they travel by car and this just adds to traffic problems.

What do you think of the government's plans to segregate the children of immigrants?

Mike Moore:In Salford we do not have many non-Salford pupils so we don't have the same sort of fierce debate as they do in Bury and Blackburn. But when we do get asylum seekers, we often get one family in one school and another family in another school and the authority isn't geared up to educate one pupil who speaks no English.

So in my personal view, in a way it would be better for that child to at least be in a school where they can communicate. So possibly that means they should all come to one school. But at the same time, you can end up with some schools which become like ghettos, where if they don't integrate they become sectarian and that is certainly what happened in Burnley and Oldham last year.

I've got friends and colleagues in Oldham who work in schools where out of 220 pupils there might be 20 white pupils. Virtually all the staff are white, so they've got an English culture being imposed on a Bangledeshi or Pakistani culture. I don't think David Blunkett can win - there is no answer to the problem.