Words, pictures and interviews: Guy Phillips

Strike action affected more than two-thirds of schools in Southampton on 30 June, when teachers from the NUT and the traditionally moderate ATL union joined university lecturers, civil servants and other public sector workers in Guildhall Square for a rally.

Teachers said they were on strike because they are being asked to ‘pay more, work longer, and get less’ and that the teachers’ pension scheme is affordable.

“As far as I’m concerned this is a tax upon teachers of £2.8 billion, to go towards paying off the deficit – which is not our fault at all,” said ATL member Sam Cutler, pictured above (front row centre), with striking colleagues from Sholing Technology College.

He said he hoped the Government would get round the table and negotiate so the dispute doesn’t go in into the autumn term.

We also caught up with Pete Sopowski (right), NUT Secretary for Southampton, who said that teachers were on strike because they don’t believe the Government is serious about negotiating on pensions. He said that teachers are going to be expected to work until they are 68 while paying more in contributions.

You can hear the full interviews using the player below:

http://audioboo.fm/boos/412604-teachers-strike-30-july.mp3

(copy and paste this link to your browser to listen)

In a letter to local authorities before the day of action, Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove said that he is ‘personally committed to working openly, honestly and constructively to ensure that teachers continue to receive the high quality pensions that they deserve and value’.

“Against this background, the Government’s view is that industrial action, with the attendant risk of disruption to pupils’ education and family life, is not justified.

Moral duty

“In the current situation both the public and parents will expect all of us to put the interests of pupils and families first. We all have a strong moral duty to pupils and parents to keep schools open and the Government wants to help you to fulfill that. I am particularly concerned that school closures would cause great inconvenience to working families and single parents who will have to make ad hoc childcare arrangements and whose own working lives will be disrupted. I am confident that you will take effective steps to support schools in staying open and to minimise the impact on pupils and parents.”

What’s your view on pensions? Is it morally right for teachers to go on strike, and to “inconvenience working families and single parents”? Or is it perhaps one of the few ways they can make their voices heard?

Wellington College threw open its doors to the cream of the education world over this weekend and welcomed all those that support and work in the profession. Eteach was there in force to speak with teachers and heads and discuss ways in which we can help with recruitment.

From Secretary of State Michael Gove to Sir Bob Geldoff, Sir Robert Winston and David Starky (to name but a few) the programme was packed with superb speakers. It was such a hard decision to decide which sessions to target and which to leave out, that one visitor admitted to starting in one session and sneaking out the back half way through, to visit another.

Credit must go to Anthony Seldon, Head of Wellington College, in organising a festival which featured an open forum to discuss and debate a range of topics across education. These included Free Schools, the current pension situation, what makes for a good education, how to turn schools around and various developments in different curriculum areas. And these were just the tip of the iceberg!

I was fortunate enough to hear Anthony Seldon outline in his opening presentation the vision and aspiration he has for all his students at Wellington College and the importance of developing the whole student, not just the academic aspect. He also spoke of his commitment to Wellington Academy in Wiltshire, where they are working hard with the state sector to give students there the grounding and aspirations that students at the College already experience. Best of all was hearing from the students themselves, who talked about their experiences at Wellington and what they felt was important in their own education.

Another session was led by Peter Hyman who originally started as a strategist to Tony Blair. He has since trained as a teacher and is shortly to head up a Free School in Newham. When questioned by the audience whether he would have advised the PM in the same way, now he has experienced teaching for himself, he replied that the outcomes would have been the same, but that maybe the methodologies would have been less prescriptive. He was also pressed by several attendees from the Newham area, where his Free School will be based, as to why he felt he could only achieve his aspirations for children via a Free School and not through the LA. If the legacy of Labour education was so good why wasn’t he supporting it and working within the government sector dealing with all the never-ending initiatives and red tape they had to work through? He replied that he wants to work alongside these schools and look at good practice and learn from them too. However, he wanted to focus on English Language as ‘the driver’ for all things and a set of skills that would infiltrate all aspects of a child’s education. These include teamwork, problem solving, confidence, interpersonal skills, self-awareness, resilience, initiative, commitment and motivation. Nothing different then to his ‘state’ colleagues down the road!

The final keynote speech of the day was a question and answer session with Michael Gove. Generally people were polite with their questions, the toughest ones being about the pensions strike and why does education always have to be driven by politics, whoever was in power at the time? Why were successive governments always changing what was being taught and why couldn’t they just leave teachers to do their jobs? He said it was the government’s responsibility on behalf of the electorate to hold teachers accountable, to focus on continuing to raise standards and to move back up the world education ranks rather than continuing to sink lower. Politics needs to drive education, to ensure our education system keeps up with a changing world where economics, social and technological developments are evolving all the time. This final question seemed to link back to where Anthony Seldon started that morning: What are we educating our young people for? Is it to fit neatly into society? For business and the economy? Or purely as learners of knowledge?

Tell us your ideas: What are we educating young people for?

Learning assistants are rapped for grammatical inaccuracies and using their local dialect in Havant; there’s news of a possible mass transformation of secondary schools in Surrey to academy status; and preparation for university life takes place in log cabins in Staffordshire… join us for our occasional skim-read through the press, to see what’s what in the world of education.

A consultant is apparently to be drafted in by a headteacher at a school in Havant to help two learning assistants “brush up on the way they speak” after the school was served with a “notice to improve”.

‘Grammatical inaccuracy’ in Hampshire

The Daily Telegraph reported that the assistants were singled out by inspectors, not just for their heavy Portsmouth accents, but also for their grammatical inaccuracy, which was apparently setting a bad example to pupils.

The head told the Telegraph that the move wasn’t denigrating the Pompey accent or dialect: “We are all proud of where we come from,” he said. “I accept however that bad grammar is not acceptable in the classroom which is why we have taken the inspectors’ criticisms constructively.” 

‘Ambitious thinking’ in Surrey

Meanwhile, just over the border in Surrey, there were media reports on a plan being hatched for all of the Conservative-controlled county council’s 53 secondary schools to become academies. The Department for Education reportedly welcomed this “ambitious thinking”.

Academies are directly funded schools outside of local authority control, and schools judged ‘outstanding’ are being encouraged to change to academy status. Education Secretary Michael Gove, who represents the Surrey Heath constituency (and who therefore wouldn’t have a say on this proposal), has been criticised by his political opponents for the paltry number of schools that have so far announced a desire to transform into academies.

The council’s strategic director for children, young people and families told the Surrey Mirror that one reason for the move is a concern that: “should a substantial number of schools become academies, the viability of some of the support services we provide to schools and their pupils may be compromised.”

The Daily Telegraph suggested that the move “represents the most enthusiastic endorsement of the Coalition’s plans to expand the number of academy schools, despite warnings from unions that academies could fracture the system of state education in England.”

Christine Blower, general secretary of National Union of Teachers, told Telegraph readers: “Given the decided lack of interest in the government’s academies proposals so far, I see no reason why Surrey schools would wish to go headlong down this route.”

‘Nowhere to hide’ in Staffordshire

And finally in this roundup, The Independent reported on a Staffordshire private school’s attempts to encourage a sense of independence in its sixth-form pupils before they head off to university, by installing groups of six in log cabins around the grounds of its 140-acre country estate.

As well as learning how to live with other people, students also acquire essential skills that aren’t part of the day-to-day curriculum, from how to boil an egg to how to operate a can opener or washing machine.

“Pupils learn how to get along with others and how to handle their idiosyncrasies,” Abbotsholme headmaster Steve Fairclough told the Indie, adding: “Life’s not always easy in the cabins. There’s nowhere to hide. They do fall out when the washing up isn’t done or when people haven’t cleared up after cooking. But each cabin finds its way of doing things.”

* Do some school staff need lessons in the Queen’s English? Should all of Surrey’s secondary schools transform themselves into academies? And do six form pupils need to learn life skills beyond the curriculum? Over to you…