New Year Newsletter for London Region NUT members

It's 2017 and so London NUT are ready with the New Year issue of our newsletter for NUT reps across the London Region. 

We’re letting you know about some of the latest events that you and your members might like to get involved in, as well as updating you on key campaigns.

Have you been using your legal right as a rep to take time off with pay to undertake training? If not, don’t delay - get yourself enrolled on to one of our excellent courses! Book your free place through the NUT website via https://www.teachers.org.uk/courses.

The NUT recommends school reps enrol on our 3-day foundation training. If you’ve completed that, or if you are a more experienced rep, then build your skills by booking on our 3-day advanced course. You can supplement your training with attendance on our one-day courses too.

Assessment, workload and funding cuts are all key priorities for the NUT. You can read more about them in the latest edition of ‘the Teacher’ magazine.

In 2016, 47% of pupils failed to reach the expected ‘standard’ in the KS2 tests (Reading, Writing, Mathematics). So, due to poorly constructed and difficult tests, nearly half our 11-year-olds left their primary school carrying a ‘failure’ notice. The NUT say the 2017 tests should be scrapped.

Have you been told that your arduous marking policy is necessary in case Ofsted visit? Well, writing for the Jan/Feb edition of the Teacher, Sean Harford makes clear that’s just not the case. 

The magazine also includes coverage of our London march against the cuts in November. Far from the NUT exaggerating the threat, the National Audit Office confirm school cuts by 2020 will be £3.0 billion - even worse than we predicted. Just as we also warned, the proposed National Funding Formula will also hit London schools hard. 

Get in touch for support in your school and to help build our campaigns to oppose these threats.

ACADEMY DANGER: The NUT are campaigning to oppose plans by some, such as the Westminster RC Diocese, to set up Multi Academy Trusts - and also to defend conditions for teachers working in MATs.

See a video on the latest academy toolkit here

Workload and testing - is that 'just the way it is' - or can unions make a difference?

GCSE results day has been and gone and so teachers, in all sectors, know their summer break is coming to an end. 

Of course, many teachers will have been working hard even while schools have officially been closed. A YouGov poll for the TES confirmed that "a third of those in their first year of teaching expect to work for at least three weeks this summer" in an effort to keep up with the ceaseless demands placed on them. As new NUT General Secretary, Kevin Courtney, commented, "It’s no wonder that there are so many that leave the profession so early".
 
Hopefully most teachers will still feel they have at least had something of a summer break - but many will be resigned to the fact that the tsunami of workload - 60 hours a week even by official figures - is soon going to wash over them once again. 

The fact that teachers are having to work weekly hours  well over the European Working Time Directive is, regrettably, no longer 'news'. In fact, it has become such an accepted fact that teachers who question their workload are too often told by managers, even by their own colleagues, "that's just the way it is".

These working hours not only damage teachers' health, they damage education too. Overwork means teachers lack the time and energy to give youngsters the individual support they need. It's also a key factor contributing to a teacher retention crisis that will see many schoolchildren starting a new academic year with yet another set of new staff to get to know and, increasingly, some classes without a permanent qualified teacher at all.

Yet, as Anna-Christina Connelly explains in the Huffington Post this week, the idea that teachers are somehow 'failing' if they complain is even being reinforced by some teacher trainers (especially with so many teachers now being 'trained' on the job by overworked teaching colleagues): She writes: "From the moment I started my own PGCE, it began: “If you’re not crying, you’re not doing it right.” A tutor laughed. “NO COMPLAINTS“ read one of the several “motivational” posters which hung above the PC in the trainee room of my placement school. “Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever.” But I was training to be a teacher, not a Marine". 

The UK already has the greatest pupil-teacher ratios in Europe

Anna-Christina's article rightly concludes that, if the scandal of teacher workload is going to be addressed, we certainly can't rely on the Government to act. The now departed Nicky Morgan was at least forced to acknowledge that the problem existed but she, and her successor Justine Greening, support an austerity government determined to cut public spending - and so increase workload. Cuts already means fewer support staff, larger class sizes and cuts to the time teachers have to plan and prepare outside of class. It will also mean more teachers being denied performance-pay increases, further worsening morale and teacher retention. We also have to remember that austerity also means greater child poverty, the inescapable factor that most affects educational outcomes despite the best efforts of hard-working teachers and school staff.

Like a sweat-shop employer that demands yet more from its workforce instead of investing in the new machinery that would really raise productivity, this Government instead relies on league tables, Ofsted and the threat of academisation as a stick to maintain the pressure on schools and their staff. In turn, too many schools simply pass on that pressure by imposing individual exam targets and assessment policies that rarely take account of what it is reasonable to expect - from both teachers and their students.

The result has been not just excessive workload but an 'exam factory' system of schooling that doesn't just demoralise teachers, it makes many children unhappy too. It's one of the factors behind the Children's Society's finding that children in England are "among the unhappiest in the world".

As the Government moves the goalposts by imposing assessment changes on both primary and secondary schools, more young people - and their schools - find themselves unfairly labelled as 'failures'. This year's GCSE results showed a 2% decline in the proportion of A*-C grades. At Key Stage 2, the number of pupils deemed to have met the 'required standard' in maths, reading and writing collapsed from 80% in 2015 to 53% in 2016. In reality, those figures represent only the consequence of shambolic Government changes, not the efforts and abilities of children and schools. However, that won't have stopped many youngsters feeling like 'failures' - nor will it stop the Government using those figures as an excuse to achieve their stated aim of academising more primary schools.

The pressure from high stakes testing is also distorting the curriculum. Schools have sought to protect themselves by doing what's best to meet the latest Government targets - which may not be what's best for their students. For example, as a result of the 'EBacc' measurement excluding arts/creative subjects, last week's GCSE results revealed that entries in these areas were down 21% since 2010 and 8% since 2015, reported as being "the largest year on year decline for over a decade".

This long-term trend will have been accompanied by a decline in the number of teachers employed to teach these subjects. As teachers leave, posts may not have been replaced - perhaps helping secondary schools to 'balance their budgets' but certainly making the trend much harder to reverse.

The damage being inflicted on children, teachers and schools by excessive workload and high-stakes testing is clear to anyone who genuinely understands education. The question is, what can be done about it?

Anna-Christina Connelly has a point when she says that "It’s up to Schools, not the Government, to protect new teachers from workload". Certainly, if more school leaders had had the courage to stand firm instead of simply passing on the pressure from Government onto their staff, then workload would not have reached such intolerable levels. However, it's hard for a school to stand up alone - what's needed is for schools and their staff to stand firm together. The best way to ensure that happens is through trade union action.

July 5 saw another well-supported national strike by NUT members. Anger against workload was, as the NUT's surveying has confirmed, one of the main factors that mobilised teachers to join the action.
 

July's NUT National Executive agreed that the national campaign on funding and workload obviously has to continue this academic year but that the NUT will also develop a campaign on primary assessment alongside other unions, parents and other campaign organisations. The NAHT General Secretary has already been quoted in the TES confirming that "a boycott remains a possibility for 2017 if discussions with the government are not fruitful".

So it's soon going to be 'back to school' but it can't be back to 'business as usual'. NUT members need to build our campaign against funding cuts, excessive workload and the Government's damaging testing regime, locally and nationally.

Assessment: Primary Headteachers say “enough is enough”

This government’s chaotic changes to assessment policy have already caused growing discontent amongst teachers, especially primary headteachers. In the last few weeks, that anger has grown sharply as primary schools take in the latest changes to assessment regulations that have been announced by government.

Not only do these changes have serious workload implications, they also threaten more schools, and more children, with being unfairly labelled as ‘failures’ in the next school league tables. Of course, ‘failure’ also carries with it the risk of forced academisation as the government presses ahead with its plans to completely dismantle local authority schooling. 

Yesterday, two different NUT Headteacher members emailed me to make sure the Union understood the seriousness of the situation. One has now written me the following letter and asked me to share it on my blog: 

“As a Head, I was already finding the frequent changes and demands to assessment procedures impossible to manage.

The changing of the deadline for Key Stage 2 assessments from the end of June to the end of May has now further increased pressure and workload on teachers, as well as children. 

The latest changes that are raising the biggest concerns are the hike in expectations and the move from a ‘best fit’ judgement to a 100% pass rate. Children now have to achieve all of the statements in each standard which is an impossible situation.
  

It has also been announced that instead of teacher assessment being moderated for Reading, Writing and Maths at the end of Key stage 1 and writing at the end of key Stage 2, it will now be ‘validated’. This will involve Local Authority validators coming into school between 7th and 21st June and 'validating' work samples. This will come after the deadline for the submission of Key Stage 2 teacher assessment and whilst we are administering the phonic screening test, so when it is already a busy time in schools.

The workload involved in this will be immense. For example, at the end of Key Stage 1 there are 13 statements that the children have to achieve to be at the national standard in Reading. Teachers have to have evidence that children have achieved every one of these statements consistently in order to be at the national standard. If you teach a class of 30 children then you have to check 390 statements for reading alone. If, as suggested by the government, teachers make sure that the statement has been achieved 6 times to prove consistency, Year 2 teachers would have to check 2,340 statements just for reading. The Government have consistently said they wish to decrease teacher workload, but this new assessment system dramatically increases it. 

For Headteachers the situation is even worse. I have to check that all statements have been achieved in Reading, Writing and Maths for year 2 and 6 before I submit the data. As I am the Head of a large Primary school, if I were to check every statement for Reading, Writing and Maths in Years 2 and 6, then I would have to check 7,266 statements. If I checked them 6 times (the Government recommendation), I would have to check 43,596 statements! At a rate of one statement per minute that would take me 726 hours and 36 minutes!! I already work 60 hours a week. This is a completely impossible task. 

Alongside this, the expected standard is far higher than last year's levels. The expected standard at Key Stage 2 in writing last year was a 4b. This year the new national expectation is the equivalent of a 5c! A school near me that recently did really well in an Ofsted inspection, looked at the new exemplification material and had 0% of children at the expected standard. 

Many Heads and teachers in my area are saying enough is enough. We need to make a stand and protect teachers from excessive workload. In our profession we are very good at taking on board initiative after initiative and making them work. This time, that needs to stop. 

The pressure on children is also intolerable. With the constant threat of forced academisation, schools are under enormous pressure to perform. This inevitably translates into more pressure on children. Our children are the most tested in Europe. This kind of testing does not raise standards, it just produces children who can pass tests based on a very narrow curriculum. 

Now is the time to make a stand and refuse to enable a system to happen that is so fundamentally flawed. We cannot enable a system to happen that we do not agree with. We need league tables to be suspended and no floor targets this year to be set. We need a return to best fit judgements as opposed to a 100% pass rate. If the Junior Doctors can make a stand, so can we!"