ARCHIVE:

1: Workload Survey

The NUT is surveying its members to see what you think is the most annoying and useless task you get told to do. A hard job deciding? The survey questionnaire was delivered with your copy of the January/February edition of The Teacher, so don't throw it away: please fill it in and send it back. The Union will be using the results in a joint campaign with the NASUWT to cut the bureaucracy out of teaching.

2: Millennium Shock

Have you looked at your diary for the year 2000? Forget the millennium bug, look at the date of Easter. Easter is so late in 2000 that the Easter holiday finishes on Monday May 1st, May Day!

The LEA proposes the following term dates:

The LEA is proposing the following dates:

	DATES	Working Days
Autumn Term 1999	Mon 6 Sep - Tue 21 Dec	72
Half-Term Holiday	25-29 Oct 1999
Spring Term 2000	Tue 4 Jan - Fri 14 Apr	69
Half Term Holiday	21-25 Feb 2000
Autumn Term 2000	Tue 2 May - Fri 21 Jul	54
Half Term Holiday	29 May - 2 Jun

Yes, that means just 19 days of the summer term before half term, and you'll not be able to leave your Christmas shopping until the holidays!

It is quite a problem, unless you can get them to change Easter. Norfolk intends to start on Sept 1st 1999 and finish on 20th July. Suffolk's scheme provides 6 full weeks in the Summer. What do you think? Any clever ideas on how to improve on these suggestions would be welcome. You can e-mail your comments direct to the Division Secretary, Martin Goold.

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3: Summer Literacy Schools

One of Mr Blunkett's Big Ideas is the hurriedly organised Summer Literacy Schools, a few of which got off the ground last summer. Now the Government wants it to become much more widespread. The schemes have to be set up by schools, who will issue their own contracts and can organise it all without reference to the LEA. Often it is Primary Teachers who will be employed on the High School premises over the summer holiday to help youngsters with their reading skills.

Participation in these schemes must be voluntary, but we have already heard of some arm twisting. The Union has informed the LEA that for those who do volunteer, we expect at least the same rates of pay as that teacher would normally be paid (i.e. based on their fte normal salary) and that it should be no less favourable than the rates the LEA have set for weekend InSeT sessions.

A minimum rate should be £18.00 per hour for teachers, and £26.00 per hour for supervisors. This work is not superannuable and a separate, supplemental contract should be issued. The general indemnity insurance applies.

4: Education Budget

You will have seen in the papers that Suffolk's grant from central Government was again less than we need to stay where we are. After years of robbing Peter to pay Paul, the County Council's other services risk a total breakdown without some help. With Suffolk right up to its capping limit and having consistently spent more on Education than its SSA heading (the amount Government allows for Education) they decided that they could not put all Mr Blunkett's so-called extra money into Education.

With some £3m from the reserves (again!) and £1.5m further savings from non-schools items, the Education Budget will grow by £12.7m. However, this is not enough to fully compensate schools for all inflationary costs. The bottom line is some 0.8% below what the average stable school needs to keep pace. The LEA have put in 2.5% for pay and price inflation, and is compensating by 0.5% for half of the pay funding shortfall from 1997's pay award. The additional costs in 1998-99 of the pay award just announced should be met in full.

Amongst the cuts are the total disappearance of discretionary grants for FE students, and extra fees for certain LEA services, including the use of the Archives Office for some 'A'-level History courses (saving all of £15,000). The basis on which schools are compensated for Social Disadvantage factors has been changed to reflect poverty indicators only, rather than a mixture of such indicators and reading scores. So, it is no bonanza. It could have been worse, but with the unliklihood of Suffolk receiving much from the other Blunkett initiatives, the lean times continue. The Government has already announced that Suffolk's average class size is so comfortably low that we do not need government money!

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5: Education Action Zones

Just when you might have been forgiven for thinking that the days of announcing a hare-brained scheme every week and getting it into operation before anyone could stop you, Blunkett has come up with Education Action Zones. Not a word about them can be found in the manifesto or any other reference before the sudden announcement of the next Big Idea.

The Union has come out strongly against them. Why? Because they will:

• Increase the differences between schools by creating more Specialist schools with more privileged funding
• Allow only EAZ schools to adapt or abandon the National Curriculum Allow EAZ schools to lengthen the working day and the working year
• Allow EAZs to disapply the Teachers Pay and Conditions of Service Document
• Lead to privatising schools and increase the alienation of LEAs: EAZs can be set up by any group, including TECs and commercial enterprises.

The only mention of LEAs is that they "could be involved"!

Then there is bribery, just like Mrs Thatcher's bribes to get you to go GM: £500,000 per Zone per year. This money is not just for equipment. The DfEE explains that it should be used to:

• relieve teachers of their administrative burdens (but only in EAZs)
• offer contracts which reward teachers for working a more flexible school day or year
• attract outstanding educational leaders as heads of schools in zones through the use of flexible contracts
• attract in "Advanced Skills Teachers".

6: Appraisal

The much-heralded reform of appraisal came a step nearer with a speech from Education Minister Estelle Morris last month at the annual Appraisal Conference. Despite some of the dire predictions, she did not say a lot that was too worrying.

Certainly, she made no reference to making compulsory the kind of aggressive monitoring, like a permanent OFSTED, that some Suffolk teachers suffer.

The two-year cycle is likely to become a one-year cycle and the attempt will be made to make Appraisal more of a management tool than a right to career development. It remains to be seen if the new regulations will emphasise the training and developmental needs, rather than the performance monitoring function.

So far, Ms Morris has not gone far beyond Suffolk's view of appraisal, one which the NUT supports and hopes to retain.

7: TAX RELIEF

With all the fuss about self assessment for TAX, don't forget that your National NUT Subscription attracts tax relief as "Job Expenses" under the heading "Professional Subscriptions". This year's amount to claim is £95 for full members. You can claim some back years, too.

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Published by the Suffolk Division of the National Union of Teachers.