It is within Damian Hinds’ “gift” to solve the workload crisis by capping teachers’ hours and radically reforming or abolishing Ofsted, the education secretary has been told.
Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, suggested that if the Department for Education failed to tackle workload then his union could force the government’s hand by taking industrial action.
Mr Courtney was in Liverpool addressing the ATL-section of the NEU, which is holding its final standalone conference before moving to a single joint conference with the NUT-section next year.
He said there had been a “degree of progress” on workload, after Mr Hinds vowed last month to “strip away” unnecessary and time consuming tasks.
But Mr Courtney warned that “fine words butter no parsnips”, and called on the education secretary to take decisive action to cut workload.
“[NEU joint general secretary] Mary [Bousted] and I think that Damian Hinds does have it in his gift to do something about teacher workload,” he said.
Addressing the education secretary directly, he said: “Damian, we want to work with you. You could introduce a limit on teachers working hours. You could radically reform, maybe abolish Ofsted. You could radically reform Key Stage 1 and 2 assessment.”
However, he also warned the education secretary that if he failed to act, the NEU could take matters into its own hands by following the example of teachers and teaching assistants who took industrial action in Northern Ireland and Durham.
“If Damian doesn’t do it, then we think that we are big enough to do it. We think that we can follow the example of teachers in Northern Ireland… we can use the inspiration of the Durham teaching assistants.
“We can talk to our members and say ‘we would like to consult with you about what action you would take if after we have been so reasonable with Damian, after we had pointed out the things they could do, if they won’t act, will you act with us?’”
“Mary and I both believe that members are ready. That they want to act, they want us to do something about teacher workload.”
He added: “We think that the NEU coming together can be in a place where we can force the government to do something finally significant on teacher workload.”
Mr Courtney’s comments came after an NEU survey found that the vast majority of teachers say that DfE efforts to cut their workload had had no impact.
