Morgan throws down gauntlet – not just stopping pay progression but cutting your pay

The imposition of performance-related pay and the fragmentation of teachers’ pay decisions are already having serious consequences - divisive performance-pay, denial of pay progression, bullying to take on even more workload to justify your salary. But things are about to get even worse.

Nicky Morgan has just written to the School Teachers’ Review Body asking them “whether you consider that there are any additional flexibilities that could be introduced to support schools, such as allowing teachers to move down from the upper pay range to the main pay range”. 

In short, already too many teachers are being denied pay rises through appraisal and performance-pay. Now they want to start allowing schools to bully teachers back down the pay-scale too. Against threats of additional workload and/or capability procedures, and with school budgets under pressure, teachers will be ‘asked’ to accept massive pay-cuts – and, unless we put up a fight, every teacher will be held to ransom. It will be like a game of 'snakes and ladders' with teachers' pay dependent on the next throw of the 'performance' dice.

There are other new threats in the letter to the STRB too, like the “possibility of non-consolidated payments” and “what adjustments should be made to the salary and allowance ranges … to promote recruitment and retention within an average pay award of 1%”. What recruitment and retention can be encouraged with an overall budget of just 1% - with anyone gaining more being at others’ expense!?

At the Salaries Committee, I helped to draft a series of recommendations to this afternoon’s National Executive and the following wording was agreed unanimously:

Recognising the threat of fragmentation of teachers' pay and the further attacks included in the STRB remit letter, the NUT should;

• issue further NUT advice to members, reps and local officers on NUT policy on adoption of pay scales for 2015-2016;
• issue specific advice to leadership members encouraging them to adopt pay scales in accordance with NUT policies;
• issue specific advice to local officers on the importance of pursuing collective disputes with Local Authorities which do not issue advice in accordance with NUT policies;
• issue further NUT advice to members, reps and local officers on pay progression highlighting key points in the NUT pay toolkit;
• encourage members, reps and local officers to challenge unacceptable policies and pay decisions both individually and collectively;
• highlight to members the threats in Nicky Morgan's remit letter to the STRB, making clear that the NUT will consider action up to and including strike action to oppose cuts to teachers' pay; and
• mount a specific campaign linking pay to growing teacher shortages as well as general recruitment and retention issues.

Other debates:

Baseline assessment: One National Executive member reported that a DfE visitor to his class had questioned why he was teaching children before the baseline assessment took place because it could make the results inaccurate! So is collecting data more important than teaching and learning? Of course, the added danger is what the data becomes used for - setting targets for 'pupil progress' and performance-pay that will be used to penalise teachers and children alike.

Trade Union Bill: a number of contributions were made about needing to highlight to teachers how the Bill would affect teachers' ability to take action - through ballot thresholds, threats to picket organisers, the use of agency staff to break strikes and more. There is a rally and meeting on the Bill in Parliament on October 13 as well as a Lobby of Supply Agencies taking place on October 28.

Jeremy Corbyn: This was the first Executive meeting since Jeremy's victory and Christine Blower spoke of how we might generate 'mutual support'. I suggested that the NUT should invite Jeremy to speak to an Executive meeting to show our support for the direction he was trying to take Labour, while also making clear the Union's education policies.

World Teachers' Day - a global struggle for education

World Teachers' Day is a day to restate teachers' determination to defeat the global attacks on public education and teacher trade unionism and to build a world where the 'fully developed individual' can blossom and grow.

My thanks to Mary from Teacher Solidarity for this quick 'video of the day' : 

For anyone who wants to know more about GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement and the battle against privatisation, here's a link to a presentation I produced for a discussion at 'Socialism 2014'. 

Don't forget to book your ticket for this year's 'Socialism 2015' event in London on November 7/8.

Communities under pressure need public services not council cuts

Last Thursday, hundreds of angry residents packed into the Honor Oak Community Centre to attend a meeting called to discuss the violent death of two teenagers on the Turnham estate in the last few weeks. 

There was plenty of emotion on display, as well as anger - anger at the loss of life, at the lack of support for the family of local victim Shaquan, and at the pressures facing the local community as a whole.

Many different contributions were made from both invited speakers and from people in the audience. Concerns about racism and about knife-crime amongst black youth in particular featured significantly throughout the evening. 

Lee Jasper, opening the meeting, pointed to the racism still ingrained in our society evidenced by the disproportionately high levels of poverty and unemployment facing black communities. The mother of the black teenager shot at Streatham Ice Rink back in 2007 talked tearfully of the wasted lives of both the victims and the youth behind bars facing indeterminate sentences for 'joint enterprise'.

A common theme raised was the decline in 'social solidarity', in opportunities for communities to work together, of the need for fathers to engage with their sons. However, some of the most powerful contributions focused on the collective pressures on families struggling to make a living and to support their children while services were cut and real incomes were falling.

A young man, Marlon, delivered an angry diatribe to the local politicians on the panel, pointing to the cuts to Sure Start, Connexions and Youth Services. He complained about 'gentrification' and plans to build more housing on the estate, supposedly social housing but, as a young woman behind me shouted out, "it's NOT affordable!".

A young woman speaking on behalf of Shaquan's mother Sharon, pointed to the reality facing so many working parents, not least Sharon herself. Sharon hadn't been able to stop to grieve; she had no choice but to carry on working at her local hairdressers to pay her rent. This was an estate where most people were in work, but where too many had to rely on food banks because of low pay. Turning to Lewisham Cabinet member Janet Daby, who had offered little more than the need to 'give youth wisdom' and the importance of 'Operation Black Vote', the young woman said pointedly, "why should we vote, when we don't trust you?" adding, "why should youth talk to the police when they don't trust them either?"

Needed - a Party that will fight cuts and racism

Alienated and angry communities like this urgently need a Party that can earn their trust by showing that they are genuinely prepared to fight poverty and racism, by refusing to carry out Tory cuts, fighting for a £10 an hour minimum wage and ending the housing policies that are leading to the 'social cleansing' of working -class communities across London.

Will a Corbyn-led Labour provide that Party? As things stand locally, it appears not. Councillors offered condolences and fine words but little more. Newly-elected local Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft offered even less, replying to the young residents with the excuse that "the political reality is that it's the Conservative Government's cuts". That was meant with shouts of derision and the MP sat down silently for the rest of the meeting.

A Lewisham Council Officer had earlier spoken to the meeting about what the Council were doing to help with 'crime reduction'. Yet, as part of the £40 million of cuts made last year, Lewisham Council chopped £1 million from its Crime Reduction Budget! Worse, its report on one of those cuts spelt out bluntly what such a cut would mean to black youth in particular: "As young men from BME communities are over represented in the criminal justice system the impact there is likely to be increased". 

Not surprisingly, the Officer also didn't reveal the further  'savings proposal' to her service discussed at the previous night's Mayor and Cabinet meeting. It suggested a possible further £2.5 million cut in the 'Crime Reduction and Supporting People' budget that will mean "reduced support for mental health, learning disability and single homeless clients" which might lead to "a rise in Anti Social Behaviour on the streets" - in their words, not mine!

That's just one cut amongst a further £45 million planned over the next two years - from a Council budget that has already been slashed by £120M - one-third - since 2010. That could include a further £6M from Adult Social Care, £3.6M from Environmental Services, £1M more cut from grants to voluntary sector organisations, £300K further cuts to Youth Services and £1M cut more from the libraries budget.

Already, however, it's clear that trade unionists and communities are getting prepared to fight those cuts. A Lobby of the next Mayor and Cabinet meeting discussing the budget, on Wednesday December 9th, is being planned. A Save Lewisham Libraries website has been launched explaining why the plans for more volunteer-run 'community libraries' has to be opposed. UNISON members are asking supporters to sign their online petition and attend the first public consultation meeting on the library cuts, on Wednesday 7th October, 7.30pm at the Broadway Theatre in Catford.

Fight the cuts, instead of just voting for them!

I hope the anger shown at the meeting sent the politicians who attended home to think again about their role in passing on Tory cuts. Labour councillors can't claim to stand against racism and poverty while they preside over cuts to communities that already have their backs to the wall.

As TUSC and the Socialist Party have explained, Labour councillors could choose to lead a fight, instead of just meekly passing on cuts. If they did, they would get massive support - including from embittered and embattled communities like those on the Turnham estate. For example, the council unions across Glasgow Council have come together to demand their councillors say 'No More Cuts'. I'll leave the final word to those unions - but theirs is a rallying cry that needs to be repeated by trade unions and communities across England, Scotland and Wales: 

"Politicians have a choice – make the Tory cuts or do not. We call on all elected politicians in the city to use all available financial mechanisms to hold-off any further cuts whilst leading a fight to win more money for the city. The council could use some of its reserves and borrowing powers, supported by the legal financial process of “capitalisation”, to ... allow time and space to build a mass campaign of elected councillors, trade unions, user groups and local communities with the objective of winning more money from the Holyrood and Westminster governments. There is plenty of money in our economy – it is just in the wrong hands or lying in the bank accounts of big business. The trade unions will support any council politician or council political grouping who adopts this strategy of “No More Cuts”.

You deserve a pay-rise - how to appeal and organise against performance-pay

Teachers are awaiting the outcome of their 'performance-reviews' which, thanks to Gove’s imposition of ‘performance-pay’, can now decide whether or not they progress up the pay-scale or, in the latest divisive twist, even if they will receive their annual pay award. Since the 1920s, teachers’ pay has been structured around annual increments. Teachers could rightly expect to progress up the pay scale as they gained experience. However now Governors are allowed to pick and choose who gets a pay rise - and who doesn’t. 

In the first year of the new performance-pay system, most teachers continued to receive pay progression. However, too many teachers still lost out. For example, figures suggest that as many as a third of main range teachers were refused progress in some of the biggest academy chains. Upper pay range rejections were even greater. This is just the start. We have to act firmly to make sure this becomes the exception, not the rule. 

 
Performance-related pay is divisive, demoralising and discriminatory. International research shows that it fails to improve pupil achievement. It certainly doesn’t help teachers! It is, of course, really about cutting the pay bill. 

After all the long hours of work teachers put in, they deserve their salary increases! Rejection of pay-progression won’t just set teachers back for one year. They will then be further down the pay-scale than they should be for years to come.

So, denial of pay-progression, even for just one year, could mean losing over £10,000 overall. 

The NUT was founded in 1870 to oppose ‘payment-by-results’ and we must do so again today.  Such robbery has to be fought.

I have produced advice for Lewisham NUT members on how to appeal and organise against attempts by schools to prevent teachers being awarded the pay rises that they deserve. Here's a little of what it says:

Don’t suffer in silence, tell your colleagues

Being rejected for progression can make teachers feel like failures, but it’s not staff who are failing, it’s the system we are working under. Unreasonable workload, growing pupil needs and a lack of time and resources all make it hard to meet the ever-growing demands put on teachers and their schools. So don’t be ashamed, be angry and organise to win the salary you deserve.

Performance-pay is designed to be divisive but trade unions have always said ‘unity is strength’. If you are rejected for pay progression, don’t just accept it. Talk to your union colleagues and make a plan of action - both for your individual appeal and for collective action against unfair policies that could threaten all teachers. 

Further detailed advice follows which can be downloaded as a leaflet or, for copying to use elsewhere, downloaded as a text file from https://goo.gl/kdhx9c

A weekend when the pendulum swung back to the left

This has been a historic weekend. For decades, Westminster politics has been dominated by right-wing, pro-big business policies. Now, after the crushing victory of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party leadership election, that pro-austerity consensus has been shattered.

For years, the press and the Tories, echoed by those in the New Labour machine (like Tristram Hunt the now EX-Shadow Education Secretary!) and even some in the trade union movement, have been telling us that 'anti-austerity is unpopular'. That's just not been true, it's just that the real mood of the majority has never (certainly south of the border) had a significant outlet. Now it has!

The news of Jeremy's victory coincided with a march of perhaps 100,000 through London in defence of refugees. That alone showed that the real public mood is in sharp contrast to the anti-migrant rubbish that is printed in too much of our press. Of course, the 'divide-and-rule' propaganda will resurface but a battle against austerity and for jobs and homes for all can help make sure it is cut across successfully.

I volunteered to steward on behalf of the NUT and, as luck would have it, was stationed by the stage when Jeremy Corbyn came to give his first public speech - just hours after his election. Here's my footage of the opening of his speech:

The confidence boost that Corbyn's victory had given to trade unionists was also visible at today's packed pre-TUC rally in Brighton hosted by the National Shop Stewards Network, addressed by many of the main left trade union leaders. A determined note was struck by all who attended - that we won't allow the Tories to steal away our rights and that we must strike together to defend any trade unionist who falls victim to these new laws - just as we have in the past.

A different period now lies ahead of us. Things will certainly not move in a straight line in building a mass anti-austerity movement - as Greece has shown. The old guard of New Labour will fight tooth and nail to keep hold of what they won for big business. There are some in the new Shadow Cabinet, not to mention the rest of the Parliamentary Labour Party, that cannot be relied on to stand firm. A battle will have to be fought both inside and outside the Labour Party - as Hannah Sell of the Socialist Party explained on Sky News:

Jeremy Corbyn’s victory has lifted the confidence of all those who oppose austerity and has already dealt a blow to the establishment. Now teachers have to take heart, take courage and take action to fight for our pay & conditions and for education.

Another Tory 'achievement' - breaking the 48 hour Working Time Directive

TUC research released today reveals that "the number of people working excessive hours (more than 48 hours per week) has risen by 15 per cent since 2010".

As the TUC explains:  "Regularly working more than 48 hours per week is linked to a significantly increased risk of developing heart disease, stress, mental illness, strokes and diabetes. Illnesses caused by excessive working time put extra strain on the health service and the benefits system, as well as impacting on co-workers, friends and relatives. Many people are working unpaid overtime and at least a million report that they want to cut their excessive hours".

There is an alarming rise in the numbers working these excessive hours in a number of professions - including teaching. The TUC reports that many employees report that they feel pressured to ‘opt-out’ from the 48 hour limit ( legislated for under the "EU Working Time Directive" ) - as individual opt-outs are currently allowed by law. However, for teachers, there is no such contractual opt-out - the Working Time Directive is included in the Schoolteachers' Pay and Conditions Document. It's just that schools are ignoring the law!

As I wrote on this blog earlier this month, "Perhaps in the past, teachers have felt wary about complaining when they know that the issue of ‘teachers’ long holidays’ will be thrown back at us. However, even assuming (completely wrongly) that teachers only work during term-time (and never in their holidays) then a 60-hour week for 39 weeks a year amounts to 2340 annualised hours. Someone in a different job working as much as 40 hours for 46 weeks a year still works only 1840 annualised hours. That’s broadly equivalent to teachers working the supposed ‘legal maximum’ 48-hour week for all 39 weeks of term-time. If the worker was contracted for a more reasonable 37 hours a week for 45 weeks a year, that would come out as 1665 hours – equivalent to a teacher working 43 hours over 39 weeks ... The issue is complicated by the Regulations stating that workers have to calculate their average hours over a 17-week ‘reference’ period, which would then include holiday periods. However, even including holidays, surely most schools are breaching the Working Time Regulations in the demands they are putting on teachers over all but the summer break?"

Kevin Courtney, deputy general secretary of the NUT, responded in the TES that the TUC figures were “alarming” and that “so much of teachers’ extra work is unproductive ... the work is done to feed the accountability machine, not to help children grow intellectually. That makes it all the more outrageous.” Kevin adds that "schools faced a “quadruple whammy” of teacher-supply problems: rising pupil numbers, rising numbers of teachers leaving the profession, fewer people entering the profession and a growing economy that would make other jobs more attractive to potential teachers. Teachers’ heavy workload would worsen the problem".

Of course, these figures will be of no surprise to teachers. They only continue a trend of increasing workload that has been continuing now for years. The question is, what action can teacher unions take to stop it?

The NUT's 8-point action programme called on Nicky Morgan to "adopt an immediate target for a reduction in teacher working hours across England and Wales and begin the phased introduction of binding limits on teacher working time". She failed to introduce any such limit and, as today's TUC figures show, the problem is getting worse, not better.

Nobody can teach to their best when they are working 60 hours a week - yet even Government figures concede that this is typical for many teachers. To protect our working conditions - and children's learning conditions - we have to start taking action - whether at a school, employer-wide or national level -  to start to make that demand a reality.

How can we build the action needed? Come and join the discussion at the next LANAC Steering Commitee on Saturday Oct 3, 12 to 4pm, Jack Jones House (Unite the Union building), 2 Churchill Way, Liverpool L3 8EF. Even better, stay overnight and join the Lobby of the Tory Party Conference in Manchester the following day!

Read and download the latest LANAC bulletin here 

APPRAISAL: Stay ‘SMART’ Don’t accept unachievable targets

The NUT recognises that a fair appraisal system can support staff development needs as well as improving pupil outcomes. However, linking appraisal to performance-pay presents a very real danger to both teachers and education.

International research warns that performance-pay fails to improve pupil achievement. It divides, discriminates and demoralises, distorting teaching  and undermining collaborative work. It is, of course, really about cutting the teachers’ pay bill. 

Regrettably, there is already evidence that new performance-pay and appraisal systems are indeed  damaging morale, as well as being used to hold back teachers’ pay. Since schools’ decisions about awarding pay progression have to be based on appraisal reviews, it is essential that NUT members make sure that they oppose any attempts to impose unachievable targets - targets which can then be used as evidence to try and stop them progressing up the pay spine.    

Lewisham NUT has issued an advice document to its members, based on various reference documents on the national NUT website. It can be downloaded here or, in a text version to adapt for use in other areas.