As the country enjoys a well-earned Easter break and teachers start to plan for next term, enthusiastic activists have gathered in Cardiff and Manchester for this year’s union conferences.
Angry teachers berating ministers for the way they run education is an annual ritual as familiar as Easter egg hunts and traffic jams.
But with school funding, teacher workload and pay, assessment chaos and a return to academic selection all on the agenda, 2017 could be a particularly stormy year.
Anger among teachers
A rebellious mood was evident when the teaching conference season began in Birmingham last month. Members of the Association of School and College Leaders, usually the most moderate and polite of unions, openly jeered education secretary Justine Greening over the government’s plan to expand grammars.
This week’s ATL teaching union conference in Liverpool suggests classroom teachers are no less angry. It began with a survey the ATL had conducted with the NUT teaching union, which revealed that three-quarters of teachers said their school faced cuts.
There were five funding motions at the ATL conference - a record, according to general secretary Mary Bousted.
We’ll be hearing people talking about the very serious situations their schools are in - I think it will be quite hot
“Unless the government finds more money for schools and fast, today’s schoolchildren will have severely limited choices at school,” she warned.
Her counterpart at the NUT, Kevin Courtney, has said that a national strike is a “possibility” if more money isn’t made available for schools by November’s Budget.
He expects an outpouring of frustration from his delegates in Cardiff this year about the current state of the schools system.
“We’ll be hearing people talking about the very serious situations their schools are in,” he says. “I think it will be quite hot.”
And it will be the last chance delegates have to speak out as members of the NUT and the ATL, with the two unions due to merge to create the National Education Union from September.
More change is in the air, with Geoff Barton taking the reins at ASCL next week following his thumping victory in the first general secretary election in the association’s history.
When the Suffolk head beat the ASCL executive’s official pick, some people dubbed the victory the “Headteachers’ Spring”.
And there’s change at the top at the NAHT heads’ union, too. When the heads’ union meets in Telford at the end of April, it will be Russell Hobby’s last conference as general secretary after seven years at the helm.
Cuts deepen ‘crisis’
Realigning education unions could breed a new bullishness. Arguably, the only issue looming larger than funding is workload.
The ATL had four motions on the issue. The NASUWT teaching union - which is meeting in Manchester over Easter - also has four motions planned, and threatens to escalate action to counter workload to “national days of strike action”.
Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary, says workload is “driving the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, exacerbated by deep cuts to pay and increases in pension contributions”. Her union has four motions on pay and conditions on the agenda this Easter.
With the School Teachers Review Body set to announce its recommendations to the Department for Education shortly, the NUT is calling for a fully funded increase that is greater than the 1 per cent public sector pay cap.
Primary assessment is another flashpoint.
On Wednesday, at their conference, the ATL voted overwhelmingly to explore the possibility of a national test boycott. Bousted had admitted that the landscape had changed following the government’s recent proposal to scrap key stage 1 Sats. But delegates wanted to keep up the pressure on ministers on the issue.
Teachers’ workload has been an issue across the whole of the last five years
The NUT continues to strike a combative tone over primary assessment. The conference has two motions planned to discuss a boycott. Courtney has also dismissed the government’s consultation on primary assessment as a “tiny” concession.
The unions are taking different approaches to grammar expansion. The ATL decided to omit a debate on academic selection from its agenda - Bousted said the union would keep its powder dry until it saw the government’s proposals. The NASUWT has followed suit, but the NUT has allowed a priority motion to discuss the issue.
Perhaps wisely after her heckling at ASCL, Greening is staying away from the potentially more raucous teaching union conferences. But she will speak to the NAHT in Telford.
As for other politicians, after Jeremy Corbyn’s standing ovation at the 2016 NUT conference, John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor, will be addressing this year’s event.
Some of the ATL’s independent school members voted against the NUT merger because they didn’t want to align with what they viewed as a more militant, politicised union. They may look askance at Courtney’s comment that the left-wing McDonnell was invited because he’s a politician “we want to listen to”.
Many of the unions’ complaints are perennial. But an unusual confluence of grievances threatens to make this season particularly combustible.
“Teachers’ workload has been an issue across the whole of [the last] five years, people feeling ignored has been an issue,” Courtney says.
“Those anxieties have not been resolved by the steps the government has taken so far, but the funding question is now going to come to the fore and is an aggravating factor.
“I haven’t got a crystal ball, but I think that would make it a pretty stormy season.”
