ATL Conference Speech

Torquay, Thursday 20 March 2008

Dr Mary Bousted, General Secretary Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Conference, it seems a long time since I welcomed you here. I hope your expectations have been met; mine have. I won’t forget the debates we’ve had on so many key issues, and I am sure that Jim Knight won’t forget ATL either!  Phil did such a great job in so courteously, and so generously, expressing our views so clearly to the Minister.  Only at ATL could you get such eloquent dissension.

For me, our debates have confirmed what I argued on Monday; our breadth of membership is our strength. We know that, together, we see more of the real picture, as we take into account a different range of perspectives on any issue. We know that our broad and balanced membership is in tune with the way that education provision is going to be planned, organised and funded in the future.  It is already happening at present – even though I know the marriage between education and social care has had a difficult start in some local authorities.

ATL has always been a union which has been proud to care about children’s lives. We know that our work in schools and colleges will be helped enormously if children and young people feel happier and safer, and they can enjoy more stability in their home lives. And we know there is so much to do.

That is why ATL supports the Government’s new Children’s Plan which Jim referred to several times both in his speech and also in his answers to your questions.  We have been assured by the Government that the Children’s Plan is the policy agenda for the next ten years.  That there will be no Children’s Plan mark two – or revised versions.  Brilliant. But who would be more naïve – Ed Balls or your General Secretary – to believe that Ed will retain his post for ten years, or even that his party will remain in power for another ten years?

Nevertheless we do support the thrust of the Plan. It brings together the Government’s policies on childhood.  It’s over 150 pages long and so contains many policy initiatives.  Some are reiterations of existing policy – some are new policy announcements, aiming to keep children happy and healthy, safe and sound, and keep them on the right track – enjoying fulfilled and positive teenage years.  It’s also about a schooling system which has excellent standards and is also equitable, and encourages young people to stay on in further education and training.

We have welcomed the Children’s Plan commitment to ensuring that all families benefit from Sure Start Children’s Centres by improving outreach services – so that the hard to reach parents get access.  We applaud the offer to every local authority of capital funding which would allow up to 3,500 playgrounds to be rebuilt or renewed and made accessible to children with disabilities.  We strongly support the planned investment of £160 million in youth services. We particularly support the Government’s plan to have a dedicated health strategy for children and to review, what are at present, hopelessly inadequate child mental health services. 

How could we not support such ambition?  Why shouldn’t we welcome a government placing children at the heart of its agenda?  And where would we be without a vision of where to go?

But Conference, I have a problem with the vision.  We all know, you all live with every working day, the truth is that young people’s learning is shaped by their experience of life outside their schools and colleges. Shaped by the times and places they live in.  Oh yes, this Plan tries to join up the various services for children, but it is silent on joining up the Government’s economic and social policies.  Where are the regional development policies which could create employment and hope for the hopeless young of our nation?  And where are the policies to reduce the inequalities which make life a struggle for too many of our youngsters?

The devil, of course, is, as always, in the detail.  Visions are fine for visionaries, the rest of us need to act upon some hard, clear, realities.  If the aims of the Children’s Plan are to be achieved, we need to establish systems which give clear answers, to two clear questions.  The first is who is responsible for what? The second is when will it be delivered?  We have had considerable experience, through the Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda, of delivering joined up services.  We know the advantages of this approach, but we also know the pitfalls.  Schools, too often, are left with responsibilities which should, rightly, sit with other services.  Because schools and teachers are there, in the community, open and accessible, they are too often expected to do too much without proper and timely professional support from other services.

It still takes far too long to get support for the child who is neglected, or in danger of abuse, and social services provision remains dangerously over stretched – in many places able to accommodate only those at the top of the at risk register.  Talking recently to a head teacher, she told me that she had, for the first time in 20 years, to exclude two pupils for violent behaviour towards teachers.  She said that she had been phoning round late into the evening to try to get some support for these pupils whose appalling behaviour had been caused by appalling home circumstances.  She told me that despite frantic efforts to gain support for these dangerously vulnerable young people who had just been permanently excluded from the school, despite repeated phone calls to social services, she had not been able to get any response at all and that, in the end, she had used some of her already over stretched school budget to get both pupils counselling.  I talked to another head teacher who said that in one multi-disciplinary conference he had 20 professionals from education, the youth offending team, health services and social services in a case conference, but when it came to the vital question of who was responsible for providing what service to help the dangerously vulnerable pupil who was the subject of the conference, it was impossible to get clear answers.

Let me make quite clear what I am saying today. I say this as we sit with the Government and other social partners to work out modernised sets of contractual responsibilities for head teachers and teachers.  I say this as a supporter of the Children’s Plan. I say this as a believer in the best education for all.  I say that the Government must not become over-ambitious for what schools can achieve. Yes, we know our young people well, and we can spot trouble, but we cannot be expected to be responsible for the entire range of services they need.  Schools and colleges are about teaching and learning - other local authority and health services are about well-being.  Schools and colleges want to work with other services, but we cannot, and must not, be expected to do it all ourselves.  Other services must take their fair share.

There are other things in the Children’s Plan which need to change and these touch on themes which have been fully discussed in my previous conference speeches, so I will just pose my challenge as questions.  I want to ask the Government how it will promote collaboration between schools when it is determined to keep performance league tables which simply drive competition?  Why does the Government continue its blind obsession with academies in the face of all the evidence that the academy effect is zero?  ATL wants good local schools with balanced pupil intakes – not schools divided by social class with the poorest and most vulnerable children concentrated in the least well performing schools and forever condemned to second-class status. 

These are old challenges, but they are worth repeating.  But there is one proposal in the Children’s Plan which poses a new challenge and which I want, now to address directly, and that is the proposal for single level testing, taking place in the Making Good Progress pilot authorities, which Jim talked about yesterday.  Jim holds out great hope for these pilots.  I have to confess that I am less optimistic.

ATL is proud to have led the debate on assessment and testing, with Colin Richards’ book on standards in primary schools, our leadership of the inter-union working group on key stage 2 SATs, and my conference speeches.

The proponents of testing have tried to caricature our arguments.  We have been accused of wanting to evade proper accountability; of trying to stop parents getting information about their children’s progress and attainment; of trying to turn the clock back to the days of the education ‘secret garden’.  Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. 

The current arrangements narrow the curriculum and lead to teaching to the test; children suffer stress and anxiety as the test looms and the rise in children’s mental health problems cannot be divorced from their status as the most tested in the world.  The tests label young people as failures, and this leads to one of the lowest rates for staying on post 16 of any industrialised country.

We also know that the tests are not reliable – over 25% of children will be given the wrong level – with all the consequences this entails either for their self esteem or for the unrealistic hopes for future progress.  Researchers have shown how the tests are not valid either – they do not measure key concepts and skills in the subject – because what can be tested by pencil and paper is so narrow.  So, the whole edifice on which the test regime has been built has crumbled.  They are not accurate; they are not valid.  They are a waste of effort, time, money and newspaper print expended in publishing league tables based on such inaccurate results.

Faced with this tide of criticism the Government has capitulated. Did you know that? You would not know it from the lack of media response, but buried on page 67 of the Children’s Plan is its wish to abandon SATs. This is a triumph for ATL.  The world needs to know that it was the patient but overwhelming intellectual case made by ATL which encouraged the decision.

So the Government has committed itself to a pilot, called ‘Making Good Progress’ which is being trialled in thirteen local authorities.  The pilot aims to focus teachers, pupils and parents on the progress each child makes, rather than the absolute standard they achieve in SATs tests.  That sounds good doesn’t it?  Every child should, really, matter, not just those on a National Curriculum level borderline.

Teachers would use their detailed knowledge of a child’s achievements to judge whether they should be entered for a test, and at what level.  Again, this sounds good.  These shorter tests, aimed at a single level, offered twice a year, will replace the SATs if the pilot is judged to be a success. 

However, much as I would welcome the end of our current testing system, I have to tell you that I fear there are as many problems with single level tests as there are with SATs. 

My first problem is that the Government expects students – every student - to progress by two National Curriculum levels in each key stage.  Obviously, lower achieving students make less progress at each key stage – that’s why they are lower achieving.  So the danger is that schools with disadvantaged intakes will continue to be penalised because their cohort of students will not make the same progress as the students those schools with more advantaged intakes.  I think this is an unreasonable and unfair measurement of progress.

And there are other problems with this expectation.  Some of these are blindingly obvious – for example, the fact that key stage 3 is a year shorter than key stage 2.  This is one reason why the number of pupils progressing two levels at key stage 3 falls.

And will single level testing will support assessment for learning? I have yet to be convinced.  I am concerned that there is every danger that Assessment for Learning would be degraded into assessment for covering the teacher’s back – reams and reams of recording of levels with very little focus on the individual student’s understanding of key concepts in the subject.

So, I have posed some serious questions which deserve serious answers.  I await them with interest.  As Jim told you yesterday, I have been appointed as the representative on the strategic group overlooking the progress of the pilots, and you can be assured that I will continue to insist that the issues I have highlighted to you in this speech are addressed.  Jim said yesterday that SATs will be abolished when we have got something better.’  The government must be commended for looking for alternatives to the current arrangements, but we have to be absolutely on guard that what does replace SATs does not make things worse.

But there is one aspect to the Making Good Progress pilot to which I am implacably opposed and this is that schools get a progression premium, a sum of money, depending on their ‘success’ in progressing each child two levels.  Conference, eventually even the Victorians realised education was not well served by a system of payment by results.  That great Victorian educator, Matthew Arnold, tore into this approach to raising school standards:

It turns the inspectors into a set of registering clerks….. In fact, the inspector will just hastily glance round the school, and then he must fall to work at the ‘log books’.  And this to ascertain the precise state of each individual scholar’s reading, writing and arithmetic.  As if there might not be in a school most grave matters needing inspection and correction; as if the whole school might not be going wrong, at the same time that a number of individual scholars might carry off prizes  for reading, writing and arithmetic!  It is as if the generals of an army….were to have their duties limited to inspecting the men’s cartouch boxes.  The organisation of the army is faulty - inspect the cartouch boxes!  The camp is ill-drained, the men are ill hutted. There is a danger of fever and sickness. Never mind; inspect the cartouch boxes!  But the whole discipline is out of order and needs instant reformation – no matter, inspect the cartouch boxes.  But the army is beginning a general movement and that movement is a false one; it is moving to the left when it should be moving to the right; it is going to a disaster!  That is not your business; inspect, inspect the cartouch boxes!

It’s funny how politicians don’t seem to learn do they?  Arnold’s wise words about a reward system which knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing important, are as true today as they were in the Victorian times.

But it is not just the children who suffer if they are denied a broad and balanced education.  Teachers and lecturers suffer too.  ATL is the education union, so we see things in the round.  We know that our members’ experience of work, their health and well-being are affected by many things – important things like their pay, and I’ll come to that later.  But what I want to talk about now is one of the most important factors in health and well-being at work, and that is to feel you have a proper measure of control over your work.  Teachers and lecturers, most reasonable people would agree, should have control, amongst other things, of the methods that they choose to impart knowledge – to use an old fashioned term, pedagogy.  They should have far more control over the subject matter that they teach – our National Curriculum should be far more focussed on the development of life skills and ways of working than whether or not we teach the Battle of Hastings. 

The Government says, proudly, and they are quite right to be proud of this, that we have the best generation of teachers ever.  But Conference, I would ask you today if you believe that these teachers feel that the balance is right between accountability and autonomy?  Do they feel they have a proper level of control over their work?  Do they feel trusted?  Jim said, yesterday, that ‘we need to develop trust in your skills as a profession’.  He never said a truer word.

You will, I hope, have read my article in this month’s report where I argue that teachers and lecturers do not feel trusted.  They feel driven, measured against unrealistic and unremitting targets.  They feel harried into producing data for bureaucratic rather than professional reasons.  In too many schools, in too many local authorities, we have the absurd, the ludicrous situation that they are spending more time engaged in providing records for others, records of their planning, records of their assessment of their pupils, rather than doing the most valuable job – teaching.

Now, the issue of trust, or, perhaps, the lack of it for teachers and lecturers is something that is at the top of my concerns.  And I have thought long and hard about what drives this silly work, what makes it so important for them to ‘cover their backs’.  But I have concluded what you all know, that the main cause is the current accountability regime led by Ofsted which induces a wholly unacceptable level of fear in our school leaders – which, in too many cases, they pass onto their staff.  Some leadership teams now spend virtually their whole time observing and monitoring their teaching colleagues – rather than leading, they follow teachers around, filling in endless observation slips, giving teachers grades which are inaccurate and meaningless.  I am reminded of the proverb, ‘big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em’.  But for far too many teachers, the effect of mindless monitoring is far from being a flea bite.  Too often it drives them to leave the profession.  I received an email from a branch secretary last week – I’ll read it to you.

Dear ….

I have, with great reluctance, decided that I will retire at the end of the Summer Term 2008. This is not a decision I have taken lightly as I have enjoyed 30 years of teaching but to continue would be detrimental to my health.

I find it increasingly stressful to be continually monitored and observed by colleagues whom I have supported through their NQT years, to deal with the workload and paperwork that is generated by the continual and inconsistent change within our workplace, to work a ten hour day, as many teachers do, then to work several hours each night and again at the weekend just to ‘keep up’. 

Unfortunately, personal testimonies such as these are far too common.  It is a tragedy that dedicated teachers are driven from the teaching because the profession feels obliged to police itself, purely to have the evidence available when the inspector calls. 

What do we know about good work?  We know that good work, fundamentally, rests upon a level of discretion.  Good work enables workers to make choices based on their professional knowledge; it enables them to choose how a task is to be completed.  It gives them a proper measure of control. 

Conference, I ask you directly, are teachers getting good work at the moment?  Do they feel able to exercise a proper level of control over their work?  Are they able to make decisions about the curriculum and the teaching methods they wish to employ with their students?  Are they treated as professionals?  Your answers say it all.  They do not, and if educational standards are to improve, then this situation must change.  School self assessment must cease to be school self inspection.  We want teachers to be accountable – yes, but not in ways which make them fearful of trying something new, scared of being a bit different.  The ability to exercise proper professional discretion is at the core of good work, and we want teachers to have more of it.

Before I end today, I want to talk about pay.  I want to say to the Government, get the negotiations over with quickly on the support staff working group so real progress can be made on what has been long promised - national terms and conditions for support staff. 

For our FE members, I am particularly pleased with our efforts in further education.  ATL has played a full part in persuading the government to recognise the increasing importance of FE to both young and adult learners, and to industry.  As lecturers in colleges throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland see our policies, and the effective way that we represent their views, they are coming over to us.  Our positive relationship with the Association of College Management in AMiE will build on that position.

In England, ATL has led the sensible section in negotiations with the college employers so that the pay gap between schools and colleges continues to shrink, if a bit too slowly for our members.  There is a silly section involved in these negotiations, but I’m sure you know who they are so I won’t bore you with the details.  I am not underestimating the difficulties in getting pay parity between schools and colleges, but this is an issue at the top of ATL’s priorities for the coming years.

We have also been active in work on qualifications and CPD for lecturers.  Proper professional development is just as important for lecturers involved in the new diplomas as it is for teachers and the present situation – where lecturers are responsible for their own CPD – is not acceptable.  Teachers in schools now have an entitlement to CPD, and we will fight to ensure that lecturers in colleges have that same entitlement.  ATL – The Education Union – wants to see “education” put back into FE”.

Pay is an issue never far from teachers’ hearts but it is particularly relevant at the moment in the light of the STRB’s recommendations for a three-year pay deal.  We said that the 2.45% rise in the first year was better than we expected, but that doesn’t mean that it is as much as teachers deserve or as much as the profession needs to maintain recruitment and retention.

ATL has patiently built a solid case for an increase in pay above the Government’s public sector limit of 2%.  The STRB accepted our evidence over the Government’s, and that is an important achievement.  It would have been easy for us to gone in for headline-grabbing statements, but we believe the strength of our evidence paid greater dividends, and ATL members have very largely endorsed that approach.

Another key concession that we have won from the STRB is an automatic review of the three-year deal.  This is significantly better than the trigger mechanism that operated – or, rather, didn’t operate – during the last round of evidence.  The review takes the decision on whether circumstances surrounding teachers’ pay have changed out of the hands of the Secretary of State, and puts it with the STRB for an independent recommendation.  What ATL has to do is to continue building our case, to make sure that the review takes place on terms that are at least as favourable to us as they are to the Treasury, and to fully involve the membership of ATL in that process.

Conference – I’m not pretending it will be easy.  The economy is not in good shape and the Chancellor will be looking at ways of plugging the holes in his public expenditure plans.  But if there is a case to make we will make it, and if we need to make it forcefully, that is exactly what we will do.  The teaching profession cannot afford to go back to the recruitment crises of the 1990s, and ATL will not let it do so.

Conference, as I draw to a close let me sum up what I think your debates this week say to the world, and particularly to the Government.  First of all: that ATL is a growing union, an organising union – and a thoughtful union.  Our members expect us to represent their professional concerns about their work, and their pupils and students, as well as their pay and conditions.  Our members have developed policies which are seated in their working experience, which often challenge remote policymakers in the Westminster village.

Some might say – how is it that your policies oppose the Government? I thought you were supposed to be in partnership?  I say: yes, ATL is in partnership with the Government - but we are not in bed.  I have no intention of getting into bed with Jim Knight.  We work closely and in a spirit of compromise on workforce issues – but when it comes to education policy, we must be free to tell it how our members see it.

We believe in a fair society, and fairness at school for all.  We believe in doing the very best we can to give all youngsters a good start in life.  And we believe in setting education staff free to use their judgement on how to do that.  The Government genuinely shares those aims, but when politics gets in the way it sometimes gets shifted off course.  ATL must always be free to warn the Government to check its GPS.

And I have a demand of you.  Are you returning home proud of your union?  Are you brimming with enthusiasm to spread the word?  Why should so many school and college staff be deprived of the privilege of membership of ATL?  I charge you all, yes, each and every one of you, to go home and spread the word, with a membership form in your hand.

The word is that ATL is strong and getting stronger.  The word is that with ATL you can get on.  The word is that ATL has the policies and the influence to change the Government’s course.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the part I have played over the last five years in supporting members to develop this great organisation.  I am proud to have been asked to continue for another five years.  Let us leave Torquay in good heart – and with a determination to meet again in Liverpool even bigger and better.

Safe journey to you all.