Speech by Dr Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) at ATL’s annual conference in Liverpool on 12 April 2017

Last week I attended the sixth International Summit for the Teaching Profession held, this year, in beautiful Edinburgh. It's a unique event - a meeting of the top performing education countries in the OECD, attended by education ministers and education trade union leaders, organised jointly by Education International, the world-wide confederation of education trade unions, and the OECD.

So, here's a photo of me, at the summit table, with our schools’ minister, Nick Gibb.

And here's the thing - no country can have a seat at the table unless both the minister and the union leader are there together. If the minister speaks, then the union leader has a right of reply, and vice versa. 

Now the conference runs on Chatham house rules - which means that you can report what was said, but not who said it. So, I can't tell you who gave this answer to the question of how education systems, across the world, can support teacher professional autonomy.

“We've given schools autonomy. We have freed them from the control of local authorities. We have liberated them from the dictatorship of education advisers and experts, from academics and universities. We have allowed teachers to set up schools, owning their professionalism and practice. We have reformed the curriculum and assessment systems, freeing schools and teachers from the tyranny of assessment. We have removed primary school levels and freed up teachers to assess pupils as they see fit.”

Much more was said by this participant at the conference, but this gives the general gist. This was his view of the educational landscape he had built. 

I was very interested in this world view. Indeed, I wondered if I was living in an alternate universe - because from where I am standing, I don't see hordes of liberated teachers and school leaders. Perhaps I am just not looking in the right places.

The mistake, of course, is to equate structural autonomy with professional autonomy. The key question is: what agency do teachers and school leaders feel they have to make appropriate professional decisions, in their schools, and in their classrooms, for the benefit of their pupils?

Professional autonomy matters because it is the basis on which teachers and school leaders have the confidence, based on evidence, informed by research, scholarship and experience to say one, small, but really important word. A teacher or school leader with professional autonomy is able to say 'no', or if not a downright 'no' - which might be a bit harsh, a little bit un ATL, at least to say 'I don't think so', or 'It's not a priority', or 'perhaps, but not yet'.

Imagine a world in which teachers and school leaders could make those responses to the latest fad which they are told are the next 'must do'. So, when teachers are told that they must mark in three colour pens, and write more in their marking than their students have written in their work, they can say “no - there's not a jot of evidence that marking in three colours improves pupils' work, so I am making a professional decision not to do it.”

Imagine a world where teachers could say ‘no’ to after-school and holiday revision classes. ‘No’ to the photocopying, printing out and sticking in books, evidence of practical work. ‘No’ to making pupils write down verbal feedback and responding to it.

The confidence to use that little word - 'no' - would be the best antidote against the punishing, excessive hours worked by the profession.

And that is just what ATL teacher members in Northern Ireland have done. They have said ‘no’ to the things which they consider add not one jot to the quality of their teaching or the pupils’ learning.  They are acting to preserve their professionalism – making choices about what they consider to be important, and focusing on that, not on mind-numbing bureaucracy.  School-by-school they meet and decide what they are going to refuse to do – it’s different for each school – and is dependent on what they judge they should not be doing – so it could be refusing to undertake pupil pursuits or learning observation walks; refusing to do micro-lesson planning; restricting attendance to one meeting per week; refusing to undertake scrutiny initiatives – book looks, etc.

And the action is sticking. Teachers are working together to regain their professional autonomy and to reduce workload. I congratulate ATL members in Northern Ireland on their successful action short of a strike. And I commend it to ATL members in England and Wales. We need to learn the lessons of our closest neighbours, and we are learning from Northern Ireland.

The Durham teaching assistants (TAs) certainly stood up and did it for themselves. A magnificent two-year-long campaign, led by the Durham Lions, otherwise known as the Durham TA support group, forced the Labour Council to sit up and take notice of their plight. The TAs have said ‘no’ to 23% pay cuts on an already low income - and we support them wholeheartedly.

ATL locally has worked closely with the TA group throughout the period, and at their recent rally in the Durham miners’ hall, both Niamh Sweeney and Kevin Courtney pledged the National Education Union’s (NEU) continuing support for the cause.

So, as we have learned from Northern Ireland, and from Durham, the ability to say 'no' or 'not yet' would be the best antidote against the current crisis facing the teaching profession in England - where, and this is almost unbelievable, over half of teachers (52%) have less than ten years’ experience.

England is a complete outlier in terms of the length of time teachers stay in the profession. What do we do? We train ‘em, launch ‘em into schools, burn ‘em out and wave goodbye as they leave – just when they should be taking on middle management roles and taking the journey, if they want, to the senior management positions that we so desperately need in our schools.

ATL’s leadership section, AMiE, is busy raising the profile of ethical leadership as we know the impact that leaders can have in tempering the pressures on teachers if they themselves lead from the right place. AMiE led the way in producing a publication called ‘Leading in tough times; keeping ethics at the heart of your practice’ which, together with ATL professional development, is helping to clarify what ethical leadership looks like in practice. In short, it’s kind, empowering yet challenging. 

But this work is under threat because of the squeeze on funding so there are heads who tell us they can’t afford to be ethical as the deputy headship role they are advertising comes with a 100-hour-a-week workload and that’s just ‘how things are’. Let me tell you this is not how things should be!

And whilst it is very good that Justine Greening has signalled her commitment to teacher professionalism and professional development – that is a hugely welcome commitment from the Secretary of State - the fact is that teachers are not getting the continuous professional development (CPD) they need in order to enrich and refresh themselves as professionals. TALIS data shows that teachers in England say that the biggest barrier to their accessing the professional development they need is excessive workload.  England’s teachers spend only an average of four days on CPD compared with an average of 10.5 days across the OECD countries. Teachers in Shanghai spend 40 days per year on CPD.

The problem is that the problem of teacher and school leader workload is now well known. There is no doubt in my mind that it is hugely responsible for the Government’s failure, for the fifth year in a row, to meet its initial teacher training (ITT) targets, at a time of rapidly rising pupil numbers.

This is another failure of the market ideology so beloved of Gove and Morgan – an ideology which required university departments to cap their ITT numbers whilst schools, without proper support, were told to pick up the slack and failed to do so. The result? Higher education institutions (HEIs) turned good candidates away. How ridiculous is that?

And the challenges of doing much more, with less, are even greater in further education than they are in schools. No wonder it is often called the ‘Cinderella Sector’. But, despite 65 per cent of 16- 18-year-olds and two million adults choosing to study in FE, it continues to bear the brunt of the harshest funding cuts. A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies published in February this year shows that by 2020, spending per student in FE will be at same level as it was in 1990. With restricted budgets, unmanageable workload, and the instability caused by the continuous cycle of mergers and restructures, it is no surprise that the FE sector currently faces a recruitment and retention crisis.

Yet despite these real and urgent problems, the Government announced the Skills Plan, which tells the sector that it must reinvent itself as the provider of T-levels and apprenticeships over the next five years. Through the Skills Plan, the Government tells us, the UK’s productivity problem will be solved and there will be enough skilled workers to keep the post-Brexit economy afloat.

However, to deliver the Skills Plan, colleges will need to implement a completely overhauled curriculum, designed by employers, and ensure that their students leave with a T-level qualification at level 3. As well as delivering three million apprenticeships by 2020! Skills qualifications with the same status as A-levels is a laudable aim, and well overdue. But if the Government really wants to achieve this, and create a twenty-first century workforce, it really needs to put its money where its mouth is to fund the Skills Plan properly, and treat the FE sector with the professionalism it deserves.

We need a serious re-balancing in the power relations in education. We need Government to do less and the profession to do more. We need a rekindling of proper, not feigned, respect for the wisdom and knowledge of teachers and school leaders, college managers and lecturers. We need our Government to listen to evidence, even when it is uncomfortable, such as the OECD’s conclusion that there is a highly negative correlation between Government imposition in the curriculum and its assessment and education performance. Whereas, when school leaders and teachers have responsibility for the curriculum and its assessment, the results, in terms of national education standards, are highly positive.

Nor should ministers be allowed to get away with the mantra that market reform, creating different types of schools - academies and free schools - something they, wrongly, characterise as professional autonomy, has resulted in rising standards of education. Ministers must no longer get away with the big untruth that they perpetrate so often - which is that freeing schools from any form of local accountability means that, magically, they perform better. They don’t. The Department for Education’s (DfE) own figures, released in January, show that at key stage 4, 51% of multi-academy trusts (MATs) are performing significantly below the national average for progress 8, and a further 15% are slightly underperforming. That means that two-thirds of MATs are underperforming at key stage 4. And at key stage 2, more than half of MATs are under- or seriously underperforming for reading. They are shocking figures, aren’t they? I wonder why they are not better known. 

Frankly, we are in a bit of a mess. A mess created by Michael Gove who, in his school revolution, has not let a thousand flowers bloom, rather a thousand weeds flourish and the weeds are growing like topsy, undermining the foundations of our education system.

So, we have, in England, an education department, the DfE, which cannot keep track of its spending, which has had its accounts qualified (which doesn't mean it gets a degree) for three years running because it has failed to keep track of academy and free school spending. Hardly a week goes by without another shock story being printed in the education press of dubious, downright fraudulent spending in free schools and academies - the latest being the Bolton Wanderers Free School, which, after huge set-up costs is being closed after two years, having paid Bolton Wanderers football club nearly £600,000 in rent. (I come from Bolton and I would love to see the palatial quality of any building in that town that would cost £300,000 a year to rent.)

Worse still, it appears that the agencies which should be overseeing, investigating and guarding against MAT and free school failure are colluding in cover-ups. We have a regional school commissioner (RSC) who has written to a failing MAT offering them a deal - if they agree to let their schools go to another MAT, then they will not be issued with a termination warning contract and will avoid what this RSC called 'further reputational damage’.

Think about that. The RSC in question is more concerned about the reputational damage of a failing MAT trust than transparency and proper accountability for the standards of performance in the trust - information which the parents sending their children to the schools in that MAT have, absolutely, the right to know.

I am sorry to have to say that the worst excesses of corporate irresponsibility have infected some MATs. Chief executives whose £400,000, and more, salaries are awarded by governing bodies who refuse to publicise the criteria by which such huge sums are awarded. 

Let me tell education ministers - the profession, and the parents of our children, do not want the worst of business excess to infect our school system. We do not want hugely inflated boardroom pay. We do not want conflicts of interest - school governors charging for the business services they provide to their schools. We do not want widening gaps between CEO pay and teacher pay - gaps which we see widening in MATs who pay their CEOs hugely inflated salaries whilst holding teacher salaries down to the 1% pay cap.

Schools should be models of the good society - places where equity and ethics are practised. Schools are public institutions, there to serve pupils, their parents, and the local community - and the community should have a say in what goes on in schools - and the interests of parents, and pupils, need to be protected.

But, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, indeed I am ashamed to say, that in some MATs the most vulnerable young people, those who already suffer economic and social disadvantage, appear to disappear from the school roll in year 11 so that they do not count in the school league tables. These are, let me remind you, the most vulnerable, most disadvantaged young people. The tables are already stacked against them. They are, if you like, the human equivalent of the damaged goods section in a supermarket. But children and young people are not objects to be bought and sold. Their worth cannot be measured in league table positions. They are people, with potential and worth, even when they appear to be doing their level best to throw that potential and worth away. Schools should be a safe place even for those pupils who will make the most difficult demands. 

Ofsted has now said that it is going to keep an inspection eye on inappropriately narrow curriculums and for year 11 school rolls which shrink rapidly. This is a very welcome move - and Ofsted would not be signalling that it is looking at this issue were there not evidence that there is a problem.

Schools should be encouraged to work together to improve practice across the system. But another effect of the marketisation of our school system is that MATs, as brands, are becoming more and more selective about which schools they want to take into their MAT 'family'. I was chatting recently to the CEO of a MAT who told me that the DfE was pressing them to take on two more schools - both in deprived areas, both with budget deficits and both in special measures. But this MAT had no intention of allowing these two schools into its family - because to do so would be to endanger the 'brand'. So, these two schools are part of a growing family of 'orphan' schools - which have been taken out of local authority support, turned into academies and failed.

How can it have come to this? Schools left abandoned - divorced from the local authority, rejected by MATs, left to sink, not to swim, in the education market place.

The fact is that money talks – and as the impact of the funding crisis in schools becomes more widely known, money is talking louder and louder. It’s shouting. And in the eye of the storm is the Department for Education which, according to both the National Audit Office (NAO) and Public Accounts Committee (PAC) reports into the financial sustainability of schools, does not know how schools are going to make the required £3 billion in efficiency savings. Nor, according to the NAO, does the Government know how much it costs schools to implement its education policies. Yes, you heard me right. I quote from the NAO report: “The Department’s savings estimate does not take account of the cost implications for schools of its policy changes.”  Which means, says the NAO, that the Government “Does not have the assurance that its policies are affordable within current spending plans without adversely affecting educational outcomes.” This is, in anyone’s book, an astonishing state of affairs.

And already we are seeing the fallout – teaching assistants made redundant; the narrowing of the curriculum; increasing teacher and senior management contact time and class sizes.

The Government talks of 15,000 more teachers but does not say that nearly 6,000 of this number are unqualified teachers – who schools find cheaper to employ.  But this is not a sustainable solution – because, as Government ministers are so fond of telling us, no education system can exceed the quality of its teachers.

And as the funding crisis in schools deepens - as school leaders struggle to make ends meet - then the spotlight on excessive CEO pay, on dubious payments to members of the governing body, to a lack of transparency and accountability, will become more and more unacceptable.

And the funding crisis will bring into sharp focus the other issue which, more than any other, will bring another crisis to the boil - it is already nearly at boiling point - teacher and school leader workload. Because if, to balance their budgets, school leaders have to sack teaching assistants, increase class sizes, provide fewer resources to support teaching, if school leaders have to do these things to try to balance their budgets (for most an impossible task) then something has to give - and that thing will be even bigger workload for teachers.

But it is not just teachers in England who have a workload problem. In Wales, the results of the first National Education Workforce Survey show that workload is a huge issue. Over 88% of teachers in Wales consider that they are not able to manage their workload.  And over a third of school teachers in Wales are considering leaving the profession in the next three years.

So, we have a huge workload problem across the UK, in Northern Ireland, Wales, England, and, according to the Education Institute of Scotland (EIS), in Scotland too.

And ATL has really worked hard to tackle the workload crisis. Our ‘It’s about time’ campaign has empowered members to work collectively with their colleagues to improve workload in their schools and colleges, through workplace visits, events and CPD in the field, and resources on a range of issues including guidance on lesson planning, marking and data management. 

The campaign is ongoing but already we are seeing its force in creating a stronger union. With the recruitment of over 1,200 workplace reps, and over 40 health and safety reps. With over 100 workplace visits across the UK on workload and work-life balance issues. And with over 50 different bespoke local and national CPD events tailored to campaign issues, including stress management, mental health first aid, assertiveness, courageous conversations, emotional resilience for staff and students, mindfulness, effective marking strategies and a variety of workshops on tackling workload together.

I am going to be fair here - and I am going to give Government ministers in England credit for taking workload seriously and for trying to do something about it. The DfE’s workload poster is important, and ATL is promoting it. It contains powerful messages about what teachers should not be doing. The poster advises teachers and school leaders not to spend time on marking that doesn’t have a commensurate impact on pupil progress. And not to create detailed plans that become a box-ticking exercise. This is very powerful, valuable, advice. And it should be taken seriously and followed in all schools.

On the other hand, I entirely agree with the movers of motion 26 that whilst ATL recognises and applauds the Government's attempts to reduce staff workload in schools, its current response to the crisis will be as successful as King Cnut in holding back the workload tide. England comes right at the top of the OECD league table for working hours in secondary schools – only behind Japan and Alberta.

Teachers experience working weeks averaging over 54 hours with two full days, per week, spent on marking and lesson planning, which leaves no time for a weekend, does it? No wonder I hear so many teachers say that they are going to reduce their paid hours, go to a point 8, so that they can spend one day a week, unpaid, doing lesson planning and marking, so that they have some free time with their family over the weekend. 

So, to be more successful in turning back the workload tide the Government has to think big and be radical. The Government has to understand that excessive, punishing, exhausting teacher and school leader workload will not be tackled successfully until the real drivers are dealt with.

And in a nutshell, the real driver of workload in our schools and colleges is the current accountability framework. Now at this point I normally have a go at Ofsted. It always goes down well with the punters here. But, this year, I am going to refrain. I do think that Ofsted is very aware of the workload issue. Sean Harford, its director of schools, has done a great deal to publicise what Ofsted don't want to see (it's all on the workload poster) and to educate inspectors in new ways of working.

But Ofsted cannot entirely escape its history - this is the agency which, as I am sure you remember, confidently stated that it could judge the quality of a lesson in 20 minutes - and stuck to that position long after the evidence was overwhelming that such a position was nonsense.

The thing is, you see, school leaders have long memories.  They also have jobs which they want to keep, and the shadow of Ofsted, and of league tables and floor standards haunts their waking, and fitfully sleeping, lives. 

It should not be the case, but it is, that the accountability tail still wags the education dog. We need new forms of intelligent accountability. ATL has done the hard thinking here - our vision for inspection offers a new, intelligent way to hold schools to account for their education of children and young people. We know that data, used wisely, is essential so that, as a school, and as an education system, we can learn what we are doing well and where we need to improve. But at the moment we are drowning in data - much of it spurious, because the sample size of the year 6 class is simply too small.

And for this year, and for the last year, much of the data will be unusable because the assessments on which it was, and will be based, are not fit for purpose. I need not remind you of the chaos of last year's key stage 2 SATs (KS2 SATs).

Nearly 50% of children failed to reach the ’expected standard’ – a figure which suggests that too many children and teachers are set up to fail with the new system. The writing assessments are so unreliable that even Ofsted doesn’t trust them, and don’t get me started on that reading test that left children in tears. You simply couldn’t make up the litany of leaks, errors, U-turns and clarifications that marred last year’s tests.  

We’ve worked hard with the DfE over the last year and managed to secure some improvements. I’m sure many of you will welcome the move to best-fit assessments for writing and the prospect of KS1 SATs ending. That said we think the DfE could be far more ambitious with their plans for primary assessment and accountability; ATL will be working with you, our members, as we respond to the consultation.  

But the confusion does not end with last year’s KS2 SATs. It is happening again, in glorious technicolour, this summer, as the new GCSEs in English and maths, and their new grading system, hit the ground, stumbling. Very late in the day the Government has reacted to the very real, and reasonable questions asked about the grading system. Like: what is a pass - a grade 4 or a grade 5? It's quite a key question, isn't it? One that should, you would have thought, been decided before the GCSE went live - but it wasn't. In a ridiculous attempt to 'raise standards' the ludicrous decision was made not to establish a clear equivalence between the new numerical and the established alphabetical system of grades.

And the problem is, as the chief regulator of Ofqual has acknowledged, there is little or no general awareness, particularly amongst employers, about what the new numerical grades mean. Is a 1 or a 9 the top grade? And what is the meaning of a pass or a strong pass? 

And what of the young people, this year's guinea pigs, at the start of what the Government believes is a glorious revolution which will herald a return to timed exams in all subjects. They face the prospect of two weeks sitting for over 30 hours in exam halls, slaving over test papers which will determine their futures.

I fear for their mental health. I fear for their resilience. I fear that employers will complain, even more loudly, that school leavers do not have the skills to succeed in the world of work.

I note that other top performing OECD countries are moving in the opposite direction - away from high-stakes, one-size-fits-all exams, to education systems which see no binary divide between knowledge and skills but seek to integrate one with the other.  Countries like Poland, which has shot up the PISA league tables, which is reforming its curriculum to focus on student inquiry, problem-solving, reasoning and collaboration. 

I note that the OECD, no less, argues that the most effective assessment strategy is to strategically combine multiple types of assessments (including traditional written exams designed by teachers, oral tests, teachers' judgements, collaborative problem-solving, long-term projects or standardised tests, so that, in the OECD's words, 'a wide variety of education goals can be fulfilled and students can develop the skills they need for the future.'

And I fear that the grades awarded to individual students, which are so important in determining their life chances, will not reflect their true achievements. I want to know just where the exam boards are going to find enough markers to cope with the exponential increase in exams? Awarding bodies estimate that 20% more examiners are going to be needed. More than that, how are the exam boards going to recruit examiners of the right calibre to mark the new exams where candidates will face, we are told, questions that require less knowledge recall and more analysis?

This will require examiners who are highly skilled subject experts. But if they are not recruited, and I fear that the exam boards will struggle, then our education system will be in a very dangerous place. 

A recent study by Ofqual, the exams regulator, revealed that in an individual English Literature paper, the probability of a pupil getting the definitive grade was just over 50%. In history it appeared to be just over 62%. In some subjects the score was just over half of pupils achieving the ‘true’ score on a single exam paper. 

Conference - all these problems are the result of acting in haste and repenting at leisure.  Government ministers pooh pooh these problems and say, airily, that whilst we are going through testing times, it will all come out in the wash. The new qualifications will settle down, and everything in the education garden will be rosy.

I fear that their confidence is gravely misplaced.

It seems to me that there is a toxic mix brewing - at its base is the funding crisis; mixed in with it is the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, added to it is the systemic failure of over half of MATs, and given extra seasoning is the unreliability of national assessments at KS2 and KS4.

And the architect of this wondrous concoction? The man who regrets rien? None other than Michael Gove - who having led us bravely into a dysfunctional education market now tells us all will be alright on the post-Brexit night.

And whilst I consider Justine Greening to be a far more competent, far less ideological Secretary of State for Education, I am afraid that she is going to have a huge policy error foisted upon her which is hugely damaging – the expansion of selection at 11.

Conference, ATL has spent a deal of time and energy using evidence to argue that an increase in selection at 11 will do nothing to help social mobility – it will, in fact, hinder it.  But the problem we have when we make this argument is this: when parents hear about grammar schools they believe that their children will pass the 11-plus and get the best education on offer.

But the facts of the matter don’t support this belief. The facts of the matter are if you are a child of poor parents, you are disproportionately unlikely to get into a grammar school. Even if you are the academically able child of poor parents, you are disproportionately unlikely to get into a grammar school – even if you live near one.

Because, there has not been an 11-plus test invented that is not susceptible to coaching. And because poor parents cannot afford coaching, which costs thousands of pounds a year, their children are highly unlikely to get into grammar schools.

Look at Kent, which introduced a new tutor-proof 11-plus test in 2014 – which resulted in a drop of only one per cent in privately educated pupils passing the 11-plus. Or look at Buckinghamshire where a new tutor-proof 11-plus was introduced in 2013 which saw the pass rate for pupils from state school drop from 23 to 20 per cent.

So, I say to Justine Greening, if you are really serious about social mobility you will not squander the talents and potential of children, condemning them, aged 11, to a sense of self undermined by failure and exclusion. You will not risk their future potential as engineers, designers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, by telling them that they are not academically able and that their future should be circumscribed by their failure to pass a test they were not prepared for and which says so little about their potential. Our children are too precious, too valuable, to be treated like this.

Conference, it is precisely because we cannot leave it to others that we must, as the old song says of sisters, do it for ourselves.  We, the profession, must become more powerful.

And that, Conference, is why ATL members voted so strongly to do something really difficult and daring. They voted to stop being ATL and, with the NUT, to become the NEU.

Because, ATL members recognised that, divided, unions can do something, but together we can do so much more.

The NEU will be a game-changer in the education policy debate and in the working lives of education professionals. It will speak, and act, always on the side of the profession. Advocating for better work. Work which is satisfying and workers not subject to a climate of fear.

The NEU will be a game-changer in schools and colleges where it will, overwhelmingly, be the biggest union, a force to be reckoned with wherever our members work, wherever they face unfair treatment, poor management or discrimination.

The NEU will be the place to go for better CPD so that our members feel more confident in their professional lives and more secure in the decisions they make and the actions they defend.

The NEU will be the place to go to argue things out, to regain your professional voice, to speak truth to power.

So that the imbalance between Government and the profession is righted.

So that the professional respect due to education professionals is given to them.

So that the education we provide for children and young people gets better. So that they enter adulthood more prepared and ready to take the opportunities available to them, to create opportunities for themselves and to become life-long learners.

Because, in the end, that’s why we are here. We are here because we care, deeply, about our pupils and students, and we want them to navigate, with confidence, an uncertain, volatile, complex and ambiguous world where old certainties, of a job for life for example, no longer apply.

We are here because we want to do more, and do better, for the children and young people we serve. To Government, we ask one thing only: give us the tools to do the job, hold us properly accountable for the work we do, and then stop meddling. Give us a period of stability, so that we can get on with our important work.

And recognise this: the NEU has changed the game. We can no longer be ignored, no longer side-lined. The collective voice of our members will be heard. And about time too.

Thank you.