Playing Them At Their Own Game

So all the teaching unions conferences have finished and surprisingly its been the NASUWT rather the NUT who have been making all the headlines. There has been a lot of whinging that won't win much public support, despite the fact that many of the points raised have been legitimate, the public will generally just wish that teachers would stop moaning. Hot classrooms are not going to extract much sympathy I'm afraid.

Arguably the best bit of conference season was Chris Keates' (General Secretary of NASUWT) closing speech. Having taken a leaf out of Gove's book she used the gimmick of having a cadboard cut out of the Secretary of State for Education to symbolise the fact that not a single Minister has attended any part of any conference. Keates described Gove as a teaching union's poster boy as his reign in office has led to a huge increase in membership for all three teaching unions. This is worrying for two reasons: government policy has made more teachers feel threatened but also because there are a lot of teachers who aren't union members, which is naive at best.

Keates used the opportunity to accuse Gove and his cronies (yes Wilshaw, you are one of those) of "eroding the professional status of teachers", and she is absolutely correct. Gove seems hell-bent on demoralising the profession in what he claims is a bid to raise standards. An army general doesn't instil courage and fight in their troops by telling them repeatedly that they are sub-standard and should be worked into the ground. All the Department for Education ever say is that teachers have been given more power to rid classrooms of disruptive influences and that academies offer schools and staff greater freedom to teach children without government interference.

Anyone who has had any recent experience of schools will tell you that it is still nigh-on impossible to exclude pupils, and is arguably even more difficult now since the excluding school has to pay for the excluded student's future provision from an increasingly shrinking budget. Academies, it is claimed by unions, are a step towards privatisation of education and an invitation to privateers to make a profit from schools. I think that it may be a little dramatic to suggest that private companies want to take over schools to gain profit but there is very little evidence that academy status raises standards at all, especially considering that the new academy has the same under-achieving students wandering through the doors, probably late. Academies offer most teachers worse money, worse benefits regarding sick, maternity and paternity pay as well as longer hours. Are the government really surprised that teachers are opposed to the move? Turkeys don't queue up to vote for Christmas.

The fact that no-one from the Department for Education has attended any conference shows the contempt for the unions who represent the profession, and in my view, the cowardice of politiians. Ministers are happy to sit in press conferences or typing up press releases in their comfy, air-conditioned offices that slate teachers, but are extremely reluctant to actually face them.

Strikes seem imminent - bring on the revolution!