ATL welcomes incoming president

South-east London born and based, Kim Knappett, will take over as president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) from 1 September 2015.

Mrs Knappett, a secondary school science teacher in Forrest Hill, will set-out the issues she is most passionate about during her presidential year, at a reception on the evening of Thursday 3 September in London*.

A science teacher for almost 30 years, Kim believes that the Government needs to give teachers:

the ‘time’ to do the work that matters to students and has an impact on them;

the space to ‘talk’ to colleagues, to share concepts, to solve problems and to develop new ideas; and, most of all, to ‘trust’ education professionals to know what is best and let them get on with the job.

Mrs Knappett said: “With teachers’ excessive workload and the constant changes to education, teachers are left with little time do the things that really count with their students. As a teacher, I know personally that the night before teaching I sometimes have to spend time doing things that I know will not really impact my students, and there are more effective things I could do.

“That is why I want teachers to be able to re-claim the time they need to do the job they, as educational professionals, know inside-out. I also want the Government to trust teachers to get on with the job. We’ve lost trust from the Government; we need to look at how we can get it back.

“Teachers also don’t get time to talk anymore; it’s one of the big changes I’ve seen in 30 years. There used to be time to sit in the staffroom and talk; we used to share ideas, we used to share resources, which we don’t do now because there isn’t time to talk.”