| Overview:1999-2000 saw further New Labour moves to emulate the Thatcher years with (1) the introduction of Fair Funding, (2) the concept of "Best Value" instead of crude privatisation, (3) the possible achievement of the Tory dream of "payment by results" and (4) extension of the OFSTED reign of terror to include new categories of failure ("Schools of Concern" and "Schools with difficulties".) To this, we add the Government's acceptance of "inclusive education", but without the planning, support and financing required to make it work, so that it becomes another impossible challenge to schools. Then there was the the so-called "modernisation" of Local Government and we have a recipe for constant change, confusion and target upon target, with no overall "vision" or guiding principles, except a ritualistic leitmotif of "raising standards", without any firm definition of the terms used. | |
| Performance-Related Pay: The Green Paper came and went and was universally rejected by teachers, governors, parents' organisations and independent research, most of which has been carefully ignored by Government, or turned around with spin and propaganda. It would appear that if PRP is changed to mean "Performance-related promotion", then this is somehow more acceptable than "performance-related pay". Although some such subtle changes of wording indicate some slight shifts on the Government's part, the basic concept of payment by results will be enshrined in teachers' pay and conditions, and teachers will be compelled to apply, and go through an assessment, for "threshold" payments simply in order to get the kind of pay rise which all teachers should be entitled to. Locally, members have been supported in applying for ill-health and premature retirements and in dealing with a number of cases of poor administration by Teachers' Pensions, including lost documents and inexcusable delaying tactics. | |
| Pensions: The previous government's restrictions on early retirement on the grounds of efficiency have not been alleviated but two new developments have added insult to injury: (1) The Government provided special grants to relieve LEAs of the cost of early retirement for Headteachers only, and with relaxed regulations, and (2) the Government is now introducing actuarially reduced pensions whereby teachers may retire if they wish from age 55, but their annual pension will always be less than the accrued service benefits, by about 5% per year. So a teacher retiring at 55 on this basis will only ever receive around 75% of the pension which would otherwise have been payable. Suffolk again allowed a very few staff to go on PRIEF, at LEA expense, and the Division again alerted Reps. to this possibility, only intimated to Heads and Governors by the LEA. | |
| The Division has kept members informed of local developments and lobbying through newsletters and FAX merges to Representatives. There was a lobby of Suffolk MPs in November which showed little or no enthusiasm for PRP amongst either Conservative or Labour MPs! An open meeting was held on December 8th in Ipswich including John Dixon speaking for the NUT. The Division Council has actively lobbied Headquarters to encourage further resistance to PRP and has supported STOPP rallies and demonstrations. A Special PRP Briefing in February gave members information on the proposed criteria and timetable for threshold payments, with a clear lead to members to resist wherever possible, without turning down a pay rise to which all teachers should have been entitled. | |
| Local Government Reform: In Suffolk, the structure of local government has been "modernised" ahead of Government legislation, with the Education Committee abolished and new "Theme Panels" being largely talking shops on wide themes, where Educational items can crop up more or less anywhere (mostly in the "Learning for Life" Panel). The role of the Teacher Representative has changed, and they serve on one of the various panels, not necessarily representing their sector. The power base has clearly shifted from those councillors interested in Education and well known to us, to the Executive Committee where the former Chair of Education is not even present. Education comes under Cllr Lewis's brief on the Executive Committee. For this reason, the Division's Secretariat now meets regularly with four councillors responsible for Education matters. | |
| Fair Funding: The LEA has been reasonably successful in selling its services to schools, with three options: (A) Buy back cost of all services, (B) buy back half the cost of services or (C) buy back nothing. Nearly all schools are choosing Option B. There is also some money held back central funding for "Access" which means that schools can still buy in Advisory Teaching and other centrally funded services. The County Music Service has actually expanded over the year, but the LEA were late to pick up on extra access funding for the Performing and Visual Arts. When the Access money was distributed on a formula basis, small primary schools, the main beneficiaries of Advisory Teacher Services, were often unable to pay for what they had previously enjoyed free of charge. The result has been a Section 188 notice to reduce staffing by up to 10.4 fte, specifically in Advisory Teacher Posts. | |
| Best Value: instead of the old dictat to privatise grounds, cleaning, etc., direct services are now able to compete on a more level playing field, but this has not stopped some schools, not least those which get themselves in the most financial trouble (see below), from using private architects instead of the LEA's, importing consultants instead of LEA advisory staff and, now, "out-sourcing" for more or less any service from school meals to payroll services. | |
| Other Section 188 situations: These are becoming more complex because of Fair Funding and the plethora of funding formulae, the hiding of carry-forward as "renewals fund" and the new bidding processes for add-ons and INSET funds. There is also much ear-marked funding for such things as booster classes and significant amounts available for successful bidding for initiative money, including Technology bids. There are now several Upper/High schools causing concern because of 6-figure deficits: it is significant that they all took the risk of not taking up the LEA's staff absence insurance. Teachers and non-teaching staff are paying the price of mismanagement by Heads and Governors, and it is apparent that the LEA's powers to intervene before things go wrong, are very limited. In Primary situations, the downsizing of ASCs and nursery planned places has led to highly targeted areas of redundancy, where "notional place" funding has allowed some flexibility in the past, but is now being rigorously monitored for "best value" solutions. This can lead to targeting of such staff for more or less automatic selection in Section 188 situations. | |
| OFSTED activity in Suffolk: There is now a list of some 53 schools of concern. This includes 4 "Special Measures", 3 with "serious weaknesses, 19 "Schools of Concern" and 27 "schools with difficulties. There have been more resignations of headteachers and much stress related to OFSTED reports, not least where reports have been allowed through the checking procedures without challenge, sometimes by the Heads themselves. More evidence of poor practice by OFSTED teams is coming our way. The closure option for schools in the first 2 concern categories has only been contemplated for Oakwood: that is in itself significant, we feel. There is more and more evidence that OFSTED arrives with a preconceived outcome, and that observations are engineered to fit the pre-determined outcome. | |
| Casework: This is still increasing, in particular with cases of capability linked with monitoring and, of course, OFSTED or pre-OFSTED inspections. One interesting feature is the way in which certain things are tolerated by some heads with some staff, where the same things are considered "unsatisfactory" by others. There is no standardisation in these matters: it is all in the hands of the Head/Governing Body. However, there is a clear increase in the number of staff who are prepared to stand up to harassment and bullying. The Division now has some 10 schools where allegations of bullying by the Head or other manager is a significant factor. Not all of these schools figure so far in the LEA's list of schools causing concern for "management" or "relationships" reasons. | |
| Appraisal and Monitoring: The Division fully supported the National Union's boycott of appraisal as part of the campaign against PRP. However, many schools in the County had already ceased to do full appraisals and were substituting the non-statutory but officially encouraged idea of Performance Management. The Union put out very helpful advice, which is only just beginning to percolate into the consciousness of school managers, because of the onset of PRP. The Division has been actively promoting the Union's policy on supportive and agreed procedures for performance management, but there has been casework in schools where a "pre-OFSTED" check-list approach to Performance Management is prevalent. Few schools have developed a really cooperative approach to the Headteacher's statutory duty to "evaluate the standards of teaching and learning". The Appraisal Standing Committee only met once during the year, because events were taking over. However, the Committee was well represented at one of the DfEE's roadshows on the Green Paper at Leicester, where opposition was clearly expressed, and clearly ignored. | |
| Injury and Accidents: The Division continues to promote better protection for members from assault and accidents, including injury through stress. More casework has arisen and the LEA's procedures and advice to schools found wanting. Despite this clear need for LEA intervention demonstrated through casework, and the Division's own detailed proposals, we still await LEA adoption of advice from Suffolk NUT and UNISON to help headteachers deal properly with cases of injury and assault. The draft NUT and UNISON document is being circulated, without LEA backing. We would prefer it to be official. Members are already getting expert advice from the Union after incidents, but we are not yet having a meaningful effect in reducing the number of incidents, avoiding hazardous situations, and obtaining the best response from other agencies. Our work here continues and is the underlying concern for major casework at Orwell High School, and incidents at Benjamin Britten and Holywells High Schools. | |
| Oakwood School Just after the last AGM the LEA announced a plan to close Oakwood EBD Residential School in September 2000. The Union protested vigorously that this was a ridiculous proposal which would leave the County's EBD provision unable to cater for up to 50 of the most difficult pupils and we warned that staff would seek to move on before closure, resulting in demoralisation and a loss of EBD expertise. Heavy lobbying resulted in a postponement of the decision, which actually made the uncertainty worse. As a result of the predicted effect on staff, by October 1999 the school was understaffed to dangerous levels and the Governors agreed to close the school "temporarily" on H&S grounds. Our lobbying resulted in the Council eventually seeing the sense of completing an EBD review before closing Oakwood, but in the meantime the pupils have been on part-time home tuition and the staff left in limbo. A second consultation document is now published, proposing to open on Oakwood premises an EBD PRU for KS2 to 3 only, with some use of the residential provision by Social Services, The Union has supported staff all along and is now seeking an employment stability agreement to ensure commensurate continued employment for our members at the "old" Oakwood. | |
| Social Inclusion: The Oakwood question got inclusive education off to a bad start in the County, as the enforced closure meant rushed attempts to return Oakwood pupils to the mainstream, before any strategies or budgetary support were available. Now the LEA has published its EBD Review and will be consulting upon it in the Summer, there are the beginnings of a framework for inclusion. One ominous development for 2000-2001 is that schools' inclusion grant will be clawed back if more than one or two pupils are permanently excluded. Schools will have the option of excluding or losing their extra grant for inclusion. The Division is already picking up casework resulting from violent and disruptive pupils being retained in schools, despite a lack of proper resourcing and provision. This will no doubt be a feature of next year's casework. | |
| New Procedures were agreed for dealing with Harassment which was adopted by Governing Bodies in the Autumn Term 1999. The Union played a large part in obtaining this and in securing a separate process for accusations against Headteachers, where the first referral can be direct to the LEA. The procedure provides for LEA involvement as of right. Similar procedures were agreed on "Whistle Blowing" which again make referral to the LEA possible. These are the first two personnel procedures under LMS which allow staff to circumvent a situation where Headteacher and Chair of Governing Body could be considered too close. | |
| Disability: The Division has been fighting hard for the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act to be applied equitably to workers in LMS situations. Up to now, the LEA has had access to central SCC funding for the employers' 20% contribution to "reasonable adaptations" via PACT to employ or retain the services of disabled teachers, etc. Because of "Fair Funding", this facility is removed from April 2000. The Division has indicated to the LEA that there are legal ways of retaining centrally an access fund for this purpose, but so far the Council has not taken this up. Actual cases of disabled members seeking assistance during this year have shown a catalogue of delay and incompetence, mostly from the Employment Service. A draft procedure for managing disability under LMS has just been published by the LEA and the Division will respond by the end of March. | |
| John Dixon is supporting the
Division in an attempt to get the LEA to drop its use of waiver clauses,
notably in EMTAG situations, from fixed-term contracts which are dependent on
external funding and any other situations where they are employed. These
contracts deny sometimes long-serving staff a right to any redundancy payment
or notice of redundancy. In the EMTAG situation, there could well be equal
opportunities implications. When Government changed the rules regarding "unfair dismissal" by reducing the qualifying period to one year, the Union immediately pursed successfully a Suffolk case where a teacher on a one-year fixed term contract had been dismissed without due process. We hope that this will further discourage the wrongful use of fixed-term contracts. |
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| Membership: The In-service membership, for facilities purposes, was as follows on December 31st 1999: | |
| Bury St Edmunds Ipswich Lowestoft Sudbury SE Suffolk Waveney & Yoxford |
662 589 213 222 375 303 |
| NUT TOTAL= + Central NATHE Overall In-Service TOTAL= |
2364 24 2384 |
| The Membership Meeting of June 15th 1999 agreed that the common Association Fee within the Division should be raised to £10.50 per full member, an increase of 50p. | |
| Organisation: Regional Office has been reorganised and expanded, whereupon the Division said farewell to Alan Williams as RO for Suffolk for many years and we welcomed John Dixon in Alan's stead. John has very quickly got his hands on to Suffolk casework and is providing members and officers alike with very efficient and professional services. Our thanks to both Alan and John for their careful attention to our needs. Despite the addition of a third RO to the Newmarket office, their workload grows apace, not helped by the Alan Ward's long-term illness. We now understand that Alan is to take retirement and that the Region will soon have a new Regional Secretary. | |
| The Division adopted from January a new experimental format for Division Council meetings designed to give more time for information exchange, debate and contributions from invited speakers. The aim is to have more focus on discussion and decision making in the second half of the meeting, and for the first half to be for reports and information from National to Local level. The Division Council has agreed to continue with this experiment and to alter the standing orders to enable new timings. It is hoped that the new arrangements will have less repetition, more information, more participation and remain fully democratic. There are, of course, teething troubles in getting the procedures right, not least in minuting, which has become more complicated. | |
| Meetings: The Division Executive Committee met 8 times in the year; the Division Council met 9 times and there was one meeting of Officers to review format of the Division Council meetings. The annual meeting of Secretaries, Treasurers and Membership Secretaries was held on 15th June 1998. Three NQ/NA meetings, one in each of the three LEA areas, were held in the Autumn Term 1999. A School Reps' training session planned for December 1999 was postponed to April 7th 2000, and is well subscribed. | |
| The Division again supported the Burston Rally and our stall (the only NUT presence) was well received and attracted interest. Signatures were obtained for a petition against performance related pay, forwarded to Headquarters. | |
| Representation: The NUT continues to take a lead role in all negotiations and consultations with the LEA, mainly through the teachers' JNC, where our Assistant Secretary, Penny Cook, remains Convener of the Teachers' Panel. Penny has done a great deal in this capacity for all teachers in the County, something which is rarely noticed or acknowledged. We remain well served by our Teacher Representatives Colin Stabler (Secondary) and Andrew Guite (Primary), sponsored by the NUT, and we await the election result for the Special Education post where the Division is supporting Barbara Robinson. | |
| For details of donations, sponsorship and financial support for events and conferences, please see Treasurer's report. Amongst the causes supported was the campaign to save the Ipswich Theatre and reverse the cuts in the Ipswich Museum Service. The Division also supports the objectives of STOPP and attended the demonstration on February 18th. We have also renewed our affiliation to Amnesty International and the Anti-Nazi League, supporting an international response to the inclusion of an openly racist party in the Austrian Coalition Government. The Teachers' Benevolent Fund continues to enjoy the Division's support, and our congratulations for being the prime movers in the creation of the Teacher Stress Helpline. | |
| Communications: The Division's INTERNET Website has changed to www.suffolknut.org.uk (curiously enough the only NUT website with "NUT" in the first domain name!) and now contains a comprehensive index and a search facility so that members seeking advice or information can readily obtain it. The site includes web versions of all reports including Secretary's reports to Division Council, and of all circulars and information briefings or leaflets. New Division Leaflets include briefings on Pensions (Stepping down and Commutation), changing the school day and "When working at school makes you ill". Links are provided to national websites, including DfEE, OFSTED, and the Benefits Agency, as well as NUT Headquarters. Most business with the LEA and with a growing number of members, Reps and schools, is now conducted very quickly and securely by e-mail, raising the Division's productivity and work capacity significantly. | |
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Thanks: My thanks to all those who have helped in the work of the Division. To John Dixon and all the staff at Regional Office. The six Association Secretaries have all been extremely busy and we must recognise the personal wear and tear that their voluntary work entails, and the difficulties of fitting in a social life around work and Union. Thanks to Assistant Secretary, Penny Cook, for her hard work both for the Division (particularly for reminding me of lots of things I had forgotten!) and on JNC, to Graham White on JNC and to the Teacher Representatives for coping with tremendous changes and uncertainty while continuing to ensure that the voice of the ordinary teacher is heard in the Council chamber. Thanks to Maggie Freeman for, once again, exemplary management of the Division's finances and for having to remind Council that it is members' money which funds our activity and it is not a bottomless pit. Finally, thanks to Ray Frowd for doing an extra stint of chairing our meetings as President with such patience and good sense. Once again, I can report that the Division is in good health and working hard for members and the service. As last year, we still need to get the younger members interested involved, which must be a priority for the coming year. |
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Martin Goold, Division Secretary, Suffolk NUT. March 2000