Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary, thanked everyone for attending the fringe meeting, which she said was on an extremely important topic. She said that the future of teaching was central to our education service.
She said it was important that we know what a good education looks like and what it means, and that people then know how best to achieve it. One of the best ways to do this, Blower added, is by evidence.
One problem, Blower said, was recent messages from the OECD that England and Wales are plummeting down the international league tables. The truth was that in at least one year between 2000 and 2009 there was insufficient data to draw a proper trend.
She added that it is simply not the case that Britain is an equal society and there is still significant poverty together with a lack of decent food and housing. She added however that there is no poverty of aspiration.
She noted the question of who can be a teacher with all countires looking to have more highly trained and educated teachers. She said that Michael Gove was proposing to allow people to walk into a classroom without any qualifications.
Christine Blower was critical of the role of primary school teachers in making children “secondary ready” and said this was extremely offensive to all primary school teachers. She added that we have to think of each phase of education as having something useful to give to young people.
The future of teaching is alive and well in NUT members she added, and what is required now is for teachers to be trusted. She said teachers also want a proper system of accountability, which Ofsted isn’t capable of providing.
She concluded that it was a shame the meeting didn’t have anyone from the Conservative party, as the NUT “wanted to engage” on the subject.
Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT began by saying she wanted to focus on current issues facing teachers right across the country, including quality of teaching, time and resources available. She was especially concerned with the quality of the teacher workforce.
Keates referred to research and polling constantly showing the majority of teachers do not feel valued as professionals and that rising numbers are contemplating quitting. Resignations are also at an all-time high, she added.
She described how people find it particularly strange that Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) is being removed, when it was regarded as a gold standard which took five years to achieve and is the equivalent to a Masters degree.
“We are seeing people employed not because of skills but because they are cheaper” she said, adding that QTLS and national pay frameworks will also be abolished. These are widely seen by teachers as an attack on their professionalism, she stated.
Pensions can now be changed again by the Secretary of State rather than Parliament, which has not been popular with staff.
The private sector is often held up as an exemplar of good practise with companies like John Lewis using a national pay framework to ensure standards are consistent, Keates explained, and asked why this was not applicable to teaching now.
She said Michael Gove stated that due to his reforms, pay will be linked to performance for first the time, but said this was not corrected as it had been happening since 2002.
She said the NASUWT has responded to Government consultations, sought meetings with Ministers and officials and undertaken polling of its members. However, the polling evidence presented by the union was trivialised by the Government, despite containing the views of 16,000 or 17,000 teachers.
The profession was on the verge of crisis, she warned, arguing that a sensible and robust system for inspection of schools is needed; one which supports and encourages schools, not one that crushes them. A genuine dialogue with the Government is needed, said Keates.