Classroom Teacher helps win workload debate

Supporters of Classroom Teacher were determined to make sure that 2009 NUT Conference voted for the Union to call national strike action on workload. In the end, we succeeded, but with just seconds to spare!

Conference debates are structured by allocating different sessions to different topics. This year, Easter Sunday morning was allocated to Conditions of Service.

One of the first debates that morning should have been on an amendment from Waltham Forest and Lewisham Associations objecting to the failure of the NUT Executive to carry out the policy agreed last year.

The 2008 Conference had agreed to develop a ‘comprehensive strategy’ on pay, conditions and class sizes including balloting for national strike action over workload. However, after the determined national action over salaries last April, the Executive had failed to include workload in the inconclusive ballot that followed in October.

We wanted to argue that the NUT Executive had made a mistake by not including workload, the key issue for most classroom teachers, in the national strike ballot. The Executive’s strategy of balloting members in individual schools to refuse to carry out particular tasks can play a role in limiting workload but, on its own, was not up to the task of winning a real change for teachers across the country.

Unfortunately, it seems supporters of the Executive did not want to have the debate. They successfully moved for Conference to go on to next business before the amendment was taken.

That left the rest of the morning to discuss motions on teacher mental health and on the need for a ‘National Contract’ that guaranteed both a fixed limit on teachers’ working hours and a minimum entitlement to 20% non-contact time for all. These are key demands – but without national action, how is such a contract to be won? How will we win the funds schools need to recruit the additional staff required to reduce workload unless we take strike action?

A lot of time was also taken up on the debate on covering teacher absences. We had no option but to participate in this debate to seek to defend the principled position that the NUT had always taken, demanding a qualified teacher in a class at all times rather than schools using underpaid cover supervisors and teaching assistants to do the job. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, a policy was agreed that risks watering down that principled opposition.

With a visiting international speaker already timetabled for the end of the session, further debate on workload was closed before our motion could be reached.

This left the discussion pushed into the final hour of “unfinished business” that takes place on the last morning of Conference. However, debates that have already been partially completed take precedence over ones that have not been started. This meant that, with ten minutes left of Conference, we were still discussing a motion on Regional Office staffing levels that had received under 4,000 votes from Local Associations to include it on the final agenda. Our motion, the fifth most highly prioritised of the whole Conference, with over 25,000 votes, was still unheard!

We had known that it was going to be touch and go. We also knew how many delegates shared our anger that such a key debate had not been reached. Classroom Teacher put out a final leaflet to delegates warning that further manoeuvring might push the debate off the agenda again. That added pressure helped ensure that the debate went ahead.

To be more accurate, the voting went ahead without any time for a debate! Carefully prepared speeches were shelved so that the Lewisham and Lewes/Eastbourne/Wealden motion could be quickly moved and seconded, and a short amendment carried. In seven minutes, the debate was concluded and our policy overwhelmingly agreed!

This means that the Union’s policy is:
a) to draw up a comprehensive claim on pay, workload and class sizes;
b) to develop publicity preparing for a campaign of industrial action to members of the NUT and other unions, parents and school governors;
c) for the Executive to ballot for national strike action on some, or all, of these priorities, if no satisfactory progress is made in securing our aims.

Securing this policy was an important victory. But now we need to make sure that, this time, it is actually put into practice. An Executive amendment, that was fortunately not reached, saying that they should just “consider” a ballot for strike action, confirms that classroom teachers will need to push hard for the ballot to take place. But the national action has to happen! We cannot allow even more teachers to be pushed out of the job by stress and overwork. This time, we have to call a halt.

Neither must we let anyone counter pose the SATs boycott agreed for 2009-10 with workload action. Both are vital to protect both teachers’ conditions and education as a whole. In fact, if the SATs boycott is pursued without mentioning workload, some teachers could be put off, rightly questioning what kind of burdensome assessment scheme the Government might try to put in place to replace SATs.

Classroom Teacher will continue to be at the forefront of the battle to win action on workload. Over 80 copies of our new “Teacher Workload” pamphlet were sold to Conference delegates. Over 50 packed into our fringe meeting called to launch the pamphlet. Those present also agreed to call a national Classroom Teacher meeting later in the summer term to build support for the workload campaign (look out for further announcements on the Classroom Teacher blog).

Let’s build national action on workload!