Model motions for National Union of Teachers (NEU) conference

Submitted by martin on 24 October, 2017 - 2:25 Author: Workers' Liberty school workers
NUT-NEU

The National Union of Teachers has merged with the ATL to form the National Education Union, but will still have a separate NUT conference on 30 March to 3 April 2018 in Brighton.

Local NUT associations and divisions will be discussing motions for this conference over the next month. They must be submitted by midday on Sunday 3 December.

Below are some texts drafted by Workers' Liberty teachers which members may wish to use or adapt when proposing motions.

After all the motions are in, a stage follows in which NUT associations and divisions choose which motions are prioritised and actually reach the conference, and then an amendments stage.

Boycott high stakes, summative testing in Primary Schools

Conference notes:

1) That for a number of conferences we have discussed the detrimental effects of the SATs and high stakes testing on children and our members in primary school. In particular the terrible effects on our children’s mental health, which are well documented, are increasing and have been likened to the effects of abuse.

2) At last year’s conference we agreed to:

‘Conduct an NUT ballot of all primary members during the Autumn term to ascertain levels of commitment for members refusing to administer Key Stage 2 SATs;

Run a coinciding ballot of head teacher members during the autumn term to ascertain levels of support for a formal boycott of SATs in 2018 both with and without the NAHT;

If sufficient support is shown through internal ballot, to ballot members as appropriate for a boycott in the spring term of 2018;’

3) Despite our discussions the SATs remain and the high stakes testing cultures grows in our primary schools.

4) The growth of bought in, high stakes, end of topic testing solely to provide data and ‘show progress’ in Primary schools.

5) Much of this high stakes, end of topic testing is externally purchased by schools at high cost, in a climate of reducing school budgets.

6) The increased workload and negative educational effects that this system perpetuates.

7) The Government’s preference for standardised external testing at KS1 and KS2.

8) The narrowing of the curriculum which is an effect of such standardised testing.

9) The role of KS1 and KS2 testing results in hastening the process of academisation of primary schools.

10) The role of KS2 testing, the ‘hot-housing’ culture on creating unrealistic ‘levels’ for children which our secondary members then have to deal with.

11) The continuing recruitment and retention crisis in teaching.

Conference believes that Government policies for assessment in primary education:

i) Are educationally flawed;

ii) Are based on a dogmatic rejection of research in learning and child development;

iii) Deny children the right to an all-round, personally-fulfilling and high quality education;

iv) Increase stress for learners and teachers alike; and

v) Do not provide an adequate basis on which to develop the knowledge and capabilities that a twenty-first century requires.

Conference resolves:

a) To ballot all of our Primary members for a boycott of all high stakes, summative testing within Primary Schools for the academic year 2018/19.

Thus allowing teachers to make their own decision about what testing assists the children in their class, in line with the statement by ‘More Than A Score’ that “Teachers should be trusted to use their professional expertise in determining the best methods of assessment.” It does not preclude teachers from choosing to assess their pupils through methods such as spelling tests and end of topic tests which support learning rather than supplying data.

This formulation does facilitate balloting all of our Primary members rather than just Year 2 and Year 6 teachers. Furthermore, it allows us to ballot members in Autumn 1 and build the campaign up to the SATs boycott in the spring term 2019.

Exams

We note that even the factory-owners' and bosses' organisation, the Confederation of British Industry, has, through a report in 2012 and a speech by its director-general John Cridland in 2015, condemned GCSE exams as turning schools into "exam factories".

Cridland declared: "increasingly in Year 10 and Year 11, we’re putting teenagers under too much pressure of exams, mock exams, retakes, assessed coursework, endless evaluation, and that’s getting in the way of learning".

Likewise, the Institute of Directors, in a 2016 report, has declared that UK education policy is turning "schools into exam factories, squeezing out creativity and the joy of learning at a time when these very attributes are becoming increasingly important". The Financial Times has called for GCSEs to be phased out: "rigour endlessly enforced in the testing-hall does little for the economy, and even less for the pupil".

We believe that this critique of the excessive use of exams in English and Welsh schools is even more valid from a humanist and democratic point of view than from the point of view of fitting students for future labour. We note the recent research report commissioned by the NUT, "Exam Factories?", which documents the harmful effect on both students and teachers of exam-based accountability measures in schools.

We further note that the system of competitive exam boards, often run for profit, creates inexorable pressures to design exams so as to be predictable, stereotyped, and cheap to mark.

The union therefore commits itself to campaign for:

The abolition of GCSE
An end to school league tables based on exam results
The abolition of school data and tracking systems based on exam targets
The abolition of SATS
The nationalisation of exam boards, and thus the creation of a single publicly-accountable agency to administer such public exams for school students as remain.

Organising in Multi-Academy Trusts

Conference believes:

That the proliferation of Academies and Free schools and the federation of many in Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) implies a significant shift in the NEU’s organising strategies, priorities and goals.

That the creation of thousands of academies has weakened local authorities and so weakened union structures which were created in order to negotiate with local authories.

That the union and our members in Academies and Free schools require structures that will enable us to most effectively confront our managements and the Academy structures of the MATs.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

1. Ensure that full-time organiser resources are used, in full collaboration and consultation with associations and divisions, to build up networks of workplace reps across MATs, systematically, school by school.

2. Set our organising teams the priority objective of establishing union committees inside each MAT made up of delegates elected by each school group inside the MAT.

3. Promote, as the main aim of these committees, the demand for recognition and negotiating rights across the MAT where it doesn’t already exist and the levelling up of terms and conditions across each MAT through a common, basic contract in line with Union policies on workload, conditions and pay.

4. Develop a strategy which seeks buy-in to local authority trade union facilities arrangements and integration with the NEU’s in-service districts as the preferred approach.

5. Where buy-in cannot be achieved, establish union structures and local leadership which are not dependent on individual reps employed by the MAT or chain but on a collectivised model which avoids as far as possible the victimisation or ‘incorporation’ of our representatives in the workplace.

6. Publicise the willingness of the Union to ballot and take industrial action within MATs to pursue our demands.

Hamas

Conference notes that when Hamas came to power in Gaza, in 2007, the new government

* attacked various trade unions, including the journalists’, health workers’ and teachers’ unions.

* purged many secular and Fatah-affiliated teachers from schools.

* Subjected those wanting to become teachers in Gaza to political-religious vetting by Hamas. A more ‘modest’ and obligatory dress code was introduced and women must now cover their hair in schools and Universities.

* altered the school curriculum to be in line with their austere, strict brand of Islam.

* purged the judiciary and replaced the police with their own force; a religious morality police was introduced.

* instituted a single-party, clerical dictatorship.

Conference believes that Hamas is an enemy of trade unionists andliberal educators.

Conference instructs the Executive to ensure that NUT delegates on delegations to Palestine should not meet representatives of Hamas, or their front groups.

Motion on Labour Party Affiliation

This Conference welcomes recent changes in the Labour Party. In particular we welcome:

1. The strengthened role for Trade Unions, through which the party was created, in the formulation of party policy

2. Labour’s commitment to a National Education Service and the reversal of funding cuts imposed by the Coalition and Conservative Governments.

This Conference believes that the National Education Union needs to strengthen our voice in Parliament and that the best way to do this is through closer ties with the Labour Party, in line with other school based trades unions, such as Unison, the GMB and Unite. The Labour Party is unique in British politics in that it has, throughout its history, had organic links with the trade union movement, through which it was founded.

Conference therefore resolves to organise a ballot of NEU-NUT Section members on the question of affiliation to the Labour Party, with a recommendation from the NEU-NUT Section National Executive for members to vote yes in the ballot.

Motion on defending and extending the right to free movement of people

This Conference notes that:

a) On 31 July 2016 the Government confirmed their intention to end free movement between the UK and the EU.

b) On 2 August the EU Commission released its Eurobarometer survey, showing 70pc of British people support the right to free movement across Europe.

c) On 4 August the Labour Campaign for Free Movement was launched with the backing of MPs, MEPs, trade union leaders and activists from across our movement, committed to making the argument for defending and extending free movement.

This Conference believes that stagnating wages, crumbling services and the housing crisis were not caused by immigration but by a government and employers making the rich richer at working people’s expense. Free movement benefits all workers. Without it, only the rich and privileged can live and travel where they want, while migrant workers are more vulnerable to hyper-exploitation, making downward pressure on wages more likely. Limiting free movement further would damage the economy and hit living standards.

This Conference further believes that the Trade Union movement must not give an inch to the falsehoods used to turn domestic against migrant workers: we stand for workers’ unity across the divisions of nationality.

This Conference will demand from an incoming Government legislation to:

maintain and extend free movement;

scrap the net migration target;

strengthen refugee rights;

dismantle the brutal anti-migrant regime built over decades;

abolish immigration detention centres; ensure the right to family reunion;

end the use of “no recourse to public funds”;

end the use of landlords and health workers as border guards;

reverse the attacks on migrants’ access to the NHS.

Cuba

Motion on Cuba
Submitted by Duncan on Sun, 10/29/2017 - 16:12
Conference notes

1. In the last two years the NUT has spent £48000 subsidising members on delegations to Cuba.

2. It would cost 65 pence to send a letter of protest to the Iranian Embassy to oppose the jailing of independent trade unionists in Iran.

3. It would cost £6.60 to send a union member to the Eritrean Embassy to hand in a letter of protest against the Eritrean government’s repression and jailing of teacher activists.

Conference acknowledges

1. Cuba is a police state with no free elections, free speech or free trade unions.

2. While America’s sanctions on Cuba are wrong, that does not justify the Cuban state’s repression against free trade unionists.

3. ‘Solidarity’ delegations to Cuba help the regime.

Conference agrees

1. To not spend a penny more on delegations to Cuba

2. To support free speech, free elections and free trade unions in every country.

Take the stress out of studying

Conference notes:

· The mental health crisis in the education sector, amongst both students and education workers.

o That 1 in 5 children and young people show some evidence of mental ill health (ONS 2016 Selected Children’s Well-being Measures by Country).

o That the average maximum waiting time for a first appointment with CAMHS is 6 months and nearly 10 months until the start of treatment (Frith, E. 2016).

o That CAMHS are turning away 23% of children referred for treatment (Frith, E. 2016)

o The 18th September 2017 YouGov report on the health of education workers which found that ‘a staggering three quarters (75%) have disclosed physical or mental health issues.’

· The comments of former government mental health champion Natasha Devon in September 2017 that ‘aside from the urgent issue of child poverty, recent changes to the education system are, in my opinion, also to blame.’

· The poor and patronising level of discussion on mental health in schools in the British press.

o ‘Why Teachers Should Make Sleep a Priority’ (The Guardian, 12 September 2017)

o ‘Stressed Teachers Offered Electric Shock Therapy to Combat Anxiety and Depression’ (The Telegraph, 1 July 2017)

o ‘Want More Energy and Less Stress? It’s Time to Rethink Your Packed Lunch.’ (The Guardian, 25th May 2017)

Conference believes:

· Poverty is a major cause of the mental health crisis in wider society.

· In schools a combination of high-stakes testing, an overburdened curriculum, petty punitive discipline like mass detention are major contributors to the mental health crisis amongst education workers and students.

· There is a need to campaign both for adequate mental health provision and to publicise the root causes of the mental health crisis in schools.

Conference resolves:

· To instruct the executive to launch a campaign against the root causes of the mental health crisis and for a better understanding of these causes. Conference welcomes the ‘Take the Stress out of Studying’ initiative, and instructs the executive to work with this campaign and other education sector unions, including the National Union of Students.

· To base this campaign on demands for increased funding for NHS mental health services, better access to counselling and therapy services for students, a pay increase for school workers, and parent, school-worker and student-led curriculum reform. The campaign will oppose austerity, petty punitive discipline and high-stakes testing.

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