I understand why Doug McAvoy has to invent “concessions” to boost his campaign for a sensible “yes” majority in the current National Union of Teachers “ballot”. There are strong reasons in favour. It is a shame Doug did not mention them in The TES (January 6). Denigrating other unions is surely not one of them.
There is one claim that needs to be refuted, for it has been put about too often. This is that it is only the NUT that has been concerned with educational and professional issues. Furthermore, claims the NUT, these have not yet been addressed and it is only due to the 1994 NUT boycott and the famous December 15 meeting with the Secretary of State that the opportunity to address them has now arisen.
Let nobody forget that had the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers not limited its ballot question and industrial action to workload, the boycott would have been dealt an early death in the courts. It ill behoves those who have brazenly used the same ballot question on workload for their own purposes to lecture others.
Remember that Sir Ron Dearing’s inquiry was established in April 1993 soon after the NASUWT commenced its boycott and before any other union balloted.
Remember John Patten’s humiliating U-turn in the House of Commons, May 11, 1993; the Dearing interim report of August 1993, together with the Government’s reaction (when it made most of the “concessions” claimed for December 15 as well as the abolition of league tables at key stages 1 and 3); Sir Ron’s second report of January 1994 and the consultations culminating in the revised subject Orders currently being dispatched to schools. If the NUT believes all these developments have just addressed workload then one can only ask what planet it has been inhabiting for the past 21 months!
Sir Ron considered and reported on all aspects of national curriculum testing and assessment. He did investigate the purpose of national testing and rejected the view that it should be formative. He recommended it should be summative.
Workload has thankfully been addressed. National testing has been slimmed down and limited to the three core subjects with external marking and other help. The statutory subject Orders have been slimmed down. Best of all, the workload-heavy moderated teacher assessment has been abolished.
At the same time the slimmeddown tests have been much improved educationally thanks to the active involvement of thousands of teachers, on a scale unprecedented. As Sir Ron freely admits, the tests themselves have been constructed by teachers. I approached leaders of the three core subject associations who all confirmed the 1994 tests to be educationally sound.
Sir Ron’s attempt to free up 20 per cent of the teaching week for schools to make their own decisions has been a significant step towards recognising teachers’ professionalism. To pretend that all these developments have not taken place but that they are about to do so thanks to the NUT 1994 boycott and the December 15 meeting is demonstrably absurd.
The NASUWT and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers sensibly limited industrial action to workload. However, members of other unions have also participated at every level in the Dearing review. What leads the NUT to believe that it has a monopoly of concern over professional matters?
To this date I have remained discreet about the exchanges that took place between the NASUWT and the NUT under the chairship of the TUC during the early part of our boycott in 1993. I kept the NUT fully briefed of all the legal developments. I emphasised that if the boycott cracked the workload problem we would then have to “bite the bullet” of the tests. I offered the NUT the opportunity of maintaining a united front. Keep industrial action for the workload issue. If the tests remained educationally unsound then campaign, as unions had done in Scotland, with parents to encourage them to withdraw their children from such unsound tests. Unfortunately the NUT never responded to the NASUWT’s sensible suggestion of dealing with the workload issue and then campaigning on educational and professional grounds in such a way as not to place industrial action in any legal jeopardy.
The uncomfortable irony for those who cannot make up their minds if they are first and foremost a trade union or an educational lobby is that progress on professional matters was only made possible thanks to clearly defined industrial action.
Nigel de Gruchy is general secretary of the NASUWT.
