Question: The Professional Association of Teachers is assembling for its annual conference on Monday. What do you expect to be the key issues?

Jean Gemmell: From the point of view of our association, our new chair, May Castrey, will be talking about where we stand as an association, and a particular issue for us is that we have on board the whole team of people who work in schools, from nursery nurses, through classroom assistants, to heads and deputies, which is fairly unusual within the teacher unions.

She will be reiterating that this is something we are very pleased and proud about. She will also be reiterating that it is still our cardinal rule that we don't ever take industrial action because we believe that works against the young people who are within our care.

My speech is going to focus on the national scene and particularly the education reform that Estelle Morris is pushing through, aided and abetted by the funding she has just managed to secure and being ably assisted by her ministers, particularly the very youthful David Miliband.

Question: With the extra £12.8 billion for education spending in England, the government promised to make a major investment in additional classroom support staff to remodel the school workforce. What was your reaction?

Jean Gemmell: I have been sitting on the Workforce Remodelling Party ever since it came into being. It started off as a Steering Group for the PriceWaterHouse review of teacher workoad and subsequently the report was issued last Christmas and after the PriceWaterHouse report had been made public, the group became the working group for the School Workforce Remodelling project.

The aim of this remodelling group is to show that the work in schools needs to be tackled by a whole team of people, not just teachers.

Question: With the nursery nurses and classroom assistants in mind, would you agree that a teacher can now be seen as the manager of a classroom team?

Jean Gemmell: I think that that is indeed the way forward and certainly one of the topics in my speech next week will pick that up. It also, as it happens, fits with my own perception based on the fact that for 16 years I was head of a fairly large Comprehensive School. So when I joined PAT three years ago as a senior professional officer, it was part of my own working philosophy anyway.

It isn't an easy change and it will be a change that some teachers find difficult in practice, even if in theory they can see the benefit of it, because it does involve completely new ways of working and new attitudes as to how schools deploy their staff.

Question: Do you think there is a danger of blurring the lines because of the numbers of classroom assistants and teachers in the classroom?

Jean Gemmell: I don't think there is a danger of blurring the lines. Lines will be blurred. I think what is important is that one doesn't actually blur the lines to a point where the primary responsibility of people is not made clear. I think that providing you have a clarity about the primary responsibility of where work lies with each individual, some fuzzing of the edges is inevitable. It happens, I would have thought, in all working practices.

Question: Following the CSR last week, the government stated its intention to "transform secondary education". Do you think their plans, which will see city academies, specialist schools and advanced schools all being set up, will work?

Jean Gemmell: I think the plans read as very complicated. I think sometimes it's very easy to get a wrong message. The first time I heard someone on the news say that "the day of the one size fits all comprehensive is over", my first reaction, as the former head of a one size fits all comprehensive, was to be very cross because I took that remark to be insulting.

As it happens, I happened to be in a meeting the following day where Estelle Morris was speaking and from listening to her speech, it became clear that her determination to return a large degree of autonomy to people to run their schools in the way that works best was absolutely in line with the philosophy that I practice anyway and so I had picked up from the media a quite different message from that phrase from the message she had intended.

The one size fits all remark was if anything a pejorative remark about the way the government had been working rather than about the schools themselves. But in delivering the message across various modes of communication that had got lost completely.

Question: With all the extra funds going to education in the CSR, do you think the government is making good its pledge to focus on "education, education, education"?

Jean Gemmell: I think that the government did intend that and does intend that. What I think is interesting and what remains to be seen, is that the way they are choosing to do it may not be the way teachers and schools anticipated they would.

For instance the workload issue is a prime case in point. I think that in pushing and pushing that teachers were overworked, there was an assumption that some of the things that teachers are being asked to do were unnecessary and that they would no longer be asked to do them. Whereas in fact, the outcome of the review on teachers' workload has been not to suggest that anything was unnecessary but to suggest that it didn't have to be teachers that did all of the tasks. Teachers might not have got what they thought they were asking for.

Question: Do you think that teachers should be given guaranteed time out of the classroom to allow them to do the marking and lesson preparation

Jean Gemmell: Yes. As an Association, guaranteed non-contact time is something the PAT has been pushing for a lot longer since I have been here. Teachers need more time away from the classroom for marking, preparation and training.

Teachers have different responsibilities. In terms of the amount of time which should be allocated to marking, it depends on the sort of school and it depends on the teachers' role within the school. Some jobs can only be done during the school day and can't be done while a teacher has a class in front of them.

I think schools have to have some sort of formula or system, which ought to be transparent and clear to everyone, which relates the amount of non-contact time to the teachers' particular responsibility in that establishment.

Question: What effect does the workload factor have on graduates who are considering teaching as a profession?

Jean Gemmell: I think that the problem of a life/work balance is one that might have an effect on graduates coming into the profession. Salary might be part of that as well. I think behavioural issues and the status of teachers within society in general and the attitude of parents, particularly those who are disaffected within education, that whole package, affects young people when they are making career decisions.

I think a main reason affecting graduates is reports from disaffected teachers and one of the things that I experienced, as someone who does case work as a union officer and is a trustee of the Teaching Awards, is the extremes of responses to what is a demanding job.

Question: Are there any specific actions Estelle Morris can take to persuade more young people to become teachers?

Jean Gemmell: I think the government has tried to take a lot of different actions. However, "Golden Hellos" and payment of loans for teachers in shortage subjects actually make life in schools more complicated rather than less, even when and where they work. A rather more transparent and straightforward system of funding is certainly something I would have appreciated when I was a head.

I think the remodelling of the school's workforce, if it actually gets off the ground and is given time to work, and if the teachers themselves have the courage and tenacity to stick with it, will alter the nature and perception of the profession.

Certainly I'm going to encourage our members in my speech next week to give it time and give it a good go. It is a radical re-look at things and is certainly in line with what this union has been advocating but I'm not foolish enough not to realise it needs a lot of work and is quite challenging.

Question: Do we have enough male and ethnic minority teachers?

Jean Gemmell: Certainly in the primary sector there are insufficient young men going into teaching. In our union we have very few young men in the early years and nursery sectors and I think it would be good if we had more.

In terms of ethnic minority teachers I don't know what the statistics are, but certainly we would welcome more members in our association. Those that we do have are very pro-active.

Question: Why do you think there are not enough male teachers in primary education?

Jean Gemmell:I think its partly an attitude which has formed over a lot of years. Society takes a very long time to move away from being stereotypical and certainly when I became a secondary head in Nottinghamshire nearly 20 years ago, there were 7 women and 90 men who were secondary head teachers in that authority.

I don't think the numbers are exactly the same but I also don't think they have changed very much. Stereotypical issues occur at both ends of the range.