Martin Powell-Davies

I concur with Andy Walker’s observations about cover supervisors, in particular that “it will not take long for them to realise that they are doing a supply teachers work for a third of the wage”. It seems to me that the DfES “remodelling” strategists have schemed that, by pretending to answer teachers’ concerns, such as our excessive workload and the burden of cover, they can then implement their real agenda. This is nothing to do with helping staff but all about reducing the overall expenditure on school staffing by replacing teaching jobs with lower paid support staff. (as spelt out in their recent “Blue Skies” document). At first sight, some colleagues may welcome having cover supervisors in place, protecting their non-contact time. However, supply teachers, for one, will not because their jobs are rapidly being replaced by cheaper, less qualified labour. Teachers as a whole need to be warned that, in the long run, it won’t just be short-time cover carried out by low-paid staff, it will be longer vacancies and then permanent posts. This will particularly happen in those schools where it is hard to recruit and/or budgets are tight. The gap between “winners” and “losers” in our education market will open further. Unfortunately, some national guidelines (“Guidance for schools on cover supervision”) have just been agreed by the other teacher unions (apart from the NUT) and the employers. These allow for cover supervisors to teach for the first three days of absence in a primary school, even longer in a secondary school. They are expected to “manage behaviour” and “respond to any questions about process and procedures” (presumably to be able to confirm that, yes, it is Q.1-6 on page 135 that you should be doing, but not to be able to help the pupils actually answer them!) There are some very able support staff who may well be, as Andy puts it “wannabe trainees” and could make excellent teachers. However, they should be on a proper training course to become qualified teachers and paid properly for the work they do. There are others who will be either dragooned in to the work by Heads or see it as a way to earn a living without realising how they are being exploited as cheap-rate supply teachers. Either way, many will not stay for long given the pressures of the job in so many of our schools, certainly those that I know in London, but I am sure many others too. This will only add further to the instability of school staffing. Equally, there are complaints about the quality of supply staff. However, anyone who has tried it also knows what a difficult job it is to do as an outsider labelled “supply” in front of a class of poorly motivated school students. The real way forward would be to stop the privatised agencies ripping off supply staff and school budgets alike and for schools and LEAs to have the funds to properly employ pools of additional staff known to the schools and pupils. They could properly teach pupils and reduce teacher workload at the same time. Martin Powell-Davies

I have been a secondary science teacher since 1986. I taught in comprehensive schools in Kingston and Bromley, as well as a short spell teaching English as a Foreign Language in Crete, before taking up my present post in the London Borough of Lewisham in 1991. I have always been active in the National Union of Teachers and, shortly after arriving in Lewisham, became the Local NUT Association Secretary and, in addition, the Joint Teacher Union Secretary. However, I have always opted to continue to be timetabled for at least one day a week in the classroom. At present I teach science, particularly the physics modules, to Years 10 and 11. I have been involved in a number of local and national campaigns through the NUT and also, as a socialist, outside the Union as well. I am presently one of four candidates standing for election to replace Doug McAvoy as the next General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers. I am the only candidate with recent classroom experience and the only one pledging to remain on a classroom teacher's salary if elected. I am the father of four primary school children. http://elect-martin.tripod.com

I'm pleased to see the forum debating the election for NUT General Secretary and am more than happy to contribute now and again myself. I am also encouraged that some of your contributors are supportive of my approach that a "teacher's leader should be on a teacher's salary". Certianly it is an idea that receives a lot of backing in staffrooms and union meetings alike. However principled you are, it is difficult to maintain your link with the members who have elected you if you are on a salary three times greater than they are ! (The same goes for some of my opponents who also have had little or no experience of teaching in the classroom this side of the introduction of the National Curriculum. My most recent experience was Year 10 Single Science a few hours ago (Friday afternoon - always a favourite slot in the timetable !) ). Andy Walker asks a fair question as to what use I would make of my "surplus" salary. However, I can assure him that there is no shortage of campaigns that need support. Every NUT Association receives appeals every month from a wide range of places, from local education campaigns, trade union bodies and wider campaigns such as anti-racist organisations. More crucially to the Union, there is a real shortage of money to support members taking strike action. I believe the Union should have a hardship fund to support members who, for example, want to take action to oppose the current plans to ration salary increases through performance pay, but are genuinely unable to afford to lose a day's pay. Finally, if Andy is hinting that I might want to spend some of that money on the Socialist Party, then certainly that would be one very good cause that I would want to support. Most Socialist Party members are low-paid and their subscriptions support a wide range of campaigns and activities on a shoestring budget. Looking at the current funding crisis in many LEAs, the threat of top-up fees dissuading many young people from going on to Higher Education, as well as wider issues such as the lack of trust many voters have in any of the establishment political parties, there is a crying need to develop an electoral challenge from candidates that support NUT policies. In Lewisham, where I work, for example, the Socialist Party have just won a second Council seat in a bye-election in a seat previously held by Labour. So, yes, these are some of the campaigns that I would want to help !

Make science fun – ditch the SATs ! I have been asked to post some ideas under the "debates in education" thread relating to NUT elections but I am also a science teacher who is very concerned at the lack of creativity / excitement / practical activity in too may schools - or as one colleague put it, "why don't science departments smell like they used to ?" ! I know this might be at a tangent to your current debate - but here's something I contributed to another debate on SATs: Government Ministers worry that too many school students appear to be turned off science and that there is a dire shortage of science graduates wanting to teach. Yet they are sticking to the KS3 SATs that have helped create the dull and dreary science curriculum taught in far too many secondary schools. As a science teacher, I admit I might be biased, but didn’t science sometimes used to be fun? Even if you didn’t get every equation, wasn’t there a chance to experiment, to find things out for yourself ? Now, with the pressure of SATs, the textbook is given far more importance than the tripod. SATs don’t just destroy creativity in English. SATs have forced science teachers to concentrate on cramming kids with facts to be tested rather than taking time to investigate or to pursue things that interest the class and the teacher. No wonder many pupils find it boring; many teachers do as well ! Far from retreating, the Government now say they want to give Key Stage 3 tests even more importance by publishing separate league tables for 14-year olds. That will mean more effort spent on “identifying the target group” for booster classes and coaching for the tests rather than meeting the needs of every pupil. We’ve all got to say that enough is enough ! We mustn’t let anyone get the false impression that KS3 SATs are really only a problem in English. In the NUT’s recent survey over half of Year 9 science teachers thought SATs were a bad way of evaluating pupil progress, over three-quarters that they did not help diagnose pupils’ learning needs. It's time science teachers spoke up - and in the Unions - about how to make a change in the science curriculum.