Conference, Honoured Guests:

It is the greatest privilege of my life to be able to speak to you as the President of the

NASUWT, the largest teachers union in the United Kingdom, so I must begin by

thanking you, the people who voted for me two and a half years ago, for giving me

that privilege. The two years I have spent as Junior and Senior Vice President have

already been the most exciting and rewarding of my career and I am confident that

this Presidential Year will top that. I have already enjoyed visiting Northern Ireland

and many parts of England and I look forward to receiving invitations from Local

Associations in Scotland and Wales.

I must also thank my colleagues in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes

who placed their trust in me as National Executive Member and encouraged me to

stand for office: without their belief in me and the support they gave I may never have

had the confidence to take this step. I shall be forever grateful to them.

I must also thank my school, Banbury Academy, and the then Head, Fiona Hammans,

for their support in putting myself forward for this role, and Oxfordshire County

Council for allowing me half-time facilities release

And I must pay tribute too to former President, Colin Abraham: I was fortunate to join

him on the staff of Vincent Thompson High School in Exeter in 1977 and saw that

this union, my union, was led by teachers, working in ordinary schools, doing the job

of teaching just like everyone else. He made me realise that my union was something

I could play a real part in, shaping its policies, joining in fighting for what was right,

creating positive change for teachers and, thereby, the students we taught.

But most of all I need to thank my parents, who instilled in me moral principles to

guide my life: honesty, justice, equality, compassion and forgiveness. They

committed their lives to helping others, running a local authority Children’s Home

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and caring for over 300 children during their 30 years service and set me on my path

serving pupils with special educational needs. The friendships I made with this very

extensive family persist to this day and I am delighted Kris Hallett can be here today

to represent that family. Like many rival siblings, Kris and I fought – metaphorically

and literally – for my mother and father’s attention. My advantage when we fought

was not so much my blood ties but the fact that she had the disadvantage of

possessing long plaits! I am immensely proud of the service my parents gave to

society, for the good they did in so many young lives; and we, as teachers, can take

pride in our service too. But is it not a disgrace that this wretched government takes

no pride in us.

Colleagues, you will all remember the slogan: “If you can read this, thank a teacher”.

It is undoubtedly true. It was used in a speech last September, and the speaker thanked

the teachers who’d given them the life chances they now enjoyed.

The speech went on “…there can never have been a more important time to be a

teacher. (True) Teachers hold in their hands the success of our country and the

wellbeing of its citizens; (Absolutely correct) they are the key to helping every child

in this country realise their full potential (no question about that). Teachers are the

most important fighters in the battle to make opportunity more equal (Right again).

Teachers are the critical guardians of the intellectual life of the nation (Probably).

Teachers give children the tools by which they can become the authors of their own

life story and builders of a better world (Undoubtedly). It is teachers, not poets, who

are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind”. (Slightly flattering, but probably

right). The speech went on “I want to defend teachers – and teaching – from the

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critics and cynics. …there are attacks directed at teaching – and I want to fight them”

(Thanks very much!)

You might be wondering who offered this paean of praise to teachers. Perhaps our ex-

President, Mick Lyons? Not him. Then our General Secretary, Chris Keates? No.

Ah! Then it must be our Deputy General Secretary, Patrick Roach – all that rhetorical

skill. Again no.

The speaker goes on to say who is attacking our profession: in his parallel universe

the attack is coming from Chris Keates and Patrick Roach.

But in his criticism of Chris and Patrick he says that the figures we cite about teacher

morale come from a ‘self-selecting sample of our members, unrepresentative of the

profession as a whole’: so the views of teachers in the largest teachers union in the

UK are, by his assertion, unrepresentative. You have to admire the chutzpah of the

man. When he wants to find evidence to support his claims, Michael Gove, as we

know, goes to professionally derived data for his assertions, as he did when he

claimed that nobody remembers history any more. To arrive at this conclusion he used

data derived from polls carried out by those well known and internationally respected

polling organisations Premier Inns and UK TV Gold. He would have hidden this

embarrassing fact, but a Freedom of Information request forced him to come clean.

But did he apologise for basing his attacks on the teaching of History on self-selected

data, unrepresentative of the truth?

This trick of ‘rubbishing’ the data he doesn’t like he deploys quite frequently. In the

same speech he says at one point “In the past , the education debate has been

dominated by education academics – which is why so much of the research and

evidence… has been so poor” and describes academics he doesn’t agree with as

“vested interests”. But elsewhere he says “An overwhelming body of academic

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literature shows…” “…impressive scientific evidence” and an “educationalist… has

proved”. As teachers we would challenge this sort of evidence selection when done

by our students in presenting an argument, so we have both a right and a duty to

challenge the Secretary of State in the same way. We must uphold the highest

standards of intellectual honesty with our students and politicians.

So are we wrong to think that he is such a threat to the teaching profession and the

world class education system we have here in the United Kingdom? Have we been

deluding ourselves? Have we been led astray?

Colleagues, you will be aware that Michael Gove has sent a personally signed copy of

the King James Bible into every school in England, so let’s put aside the Secretary of

State’s rhetoric and examine his record, for, as it says in the King James version “by

their fruits you shall know them”.

So what fruits has Michael Gove brought forth?

No child in state funded schools has the right to be taught by a qualified teacher. In

21st Century England, Michael Gove has removed from children the right to be taught

by a qualified teacher. I can barely believe I’m saying this. Michael Gove has

removed the first level of quality control within our profession but thinks he’s

defending education by doing so; and the people who are trying to protect the right of

children to be taught by a qualified professional, they are attacking education: it’s a

wonder Alice Through the Looking Glass is not a compulsory text for GCSE

Literature. Still, we must be grateful he’s not Secretary of State for Health and doing

the same for dentistry, or we could be going for an extraction to find the local

blacksmith leaning over us to perform the operation. After all, he’s strong enough to

be able to pull the tooth out, he knows how to grip a pair of pliers and he’s cheaper by

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far. Or you could find yourself in hospital with appendicitis to discover the local

barber stropping his razor…. Colleagues, unregulated, unqualified people have

performed many public services over the centuries, but in no other profession than

education has the person whose role it is to make educational policy sought to

advance the profession by turning the clock back to a previous century. By their fruits

you shall know them.

Colleagues, we know we need to look to the future, not the past; to anticipate the

future needs of the children we teach, not hanker for the old certainties .

The NASUWT is proud of the contribution made by our members and by all teachers

in securing educational provision throughout the whole of the United Kingdom that is

among the best in the world. But, shamefully, some politicians, especially the current

Secretary of State, choose to cherry-pick data to criticise public education whilst they

try to chase the same prize – being top of the international league tables, a trait that to

some degree afflicts all Education Ministers across the UK. And in their desperate

quest they have brought in punitive inspection systems which have led to a narrowing

of the curriculum, over-prescription and tick-box accountability regimes.

But colleagues, my greatest achievements as a teacher of pupils with special

educational needs were achieved despite all this, not because of it. Leon is a case in

point. When Leon arrived at my school for a preliminary visit at the end of Year 6, as

soon as he got through the door he shot under a table and cowered against the wall.

When my expression of surprise registered with his TA she commented that Leon had

spent most of his Primary years under a table, kicking out at anyone who tried to get

near him. I bent down, smiled at him and beckoned him out with my index finger.

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When he emerged I extended my hand and said, “Hello Leon, my name’s Mr Branner.

Would you like to sit here next to me?” I instantly knew the root of the problem, for

Leon possessed a unique and challenging fragrance. Ill-looked-after, he had been

shunned by his peers for 6 years and had retreated into isolation. He was in danger of

5 more years of rejection. Leon could neither read nor write, but his individual

education plan did not start with those skills: something more fundamental needed to

be put in place first, and with the help of a wonderful TA, the late Mary Thomas, we

provided him with the means and opportunity to keep himself clean, with complete

changes of clothes, and taught him how to use the school washing machine to launder

them himself. With those essentials in place the astonishingly caring nature of Leon

emerged. We taught him to read and write and, via work experience, he got a job and

he’s still in gainful employment.

Where does that fit in the lesson observation tick list? Under what section of an

Ofsted Report is such an achievement celebrated? Colleagues, real education has

always been about more than 5A*-Cs including English and Maths. It’s about giving

our students the tools by which they can become the authors of their own life story,

and each student needs their own, individual and sometimes different set of tools.

Only we, qualified and professional teachers, can provide that; not here-today, gone-

tomorrow politicians. As Keith Bartley, the former Head of the GTC and later Chief

Executive for the Department of Education and Child Development in South Australia

told me in December, “We should measure what we value, not value what we

measure”. The current accountability regime only does the latter, and in doing so it

sells our profession short.

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Despite the intense workload created for us by the attacks on teachers’

professionalism, and by deregulation and privatisation of our schools, we must set our

sights firmly on the bigger picture. We must ask ourselves: What does the educational

world need to look like if we are to maintain world class schools? What is the

philosophy that should underpin the provision of public education in this country?

What are the purposes of a public funded education service? What should be the

future of education in the United Kingdom beyond the Independence Referendum in

Scotland and the next General Election? And we answered these questions and

expressed our vision in last year’s report to Conference, “Maintaining World Class

Schools in the 21st Century”.

Education is a human right established in international law and public education exists

not just for the benefit of the individual but also for the good of society in its widest

sense.

The UNESCO commission on Education for the 21st Century said, “while education is

an on-going process of improving knowledge and skills, it is also – perhaps primarily

– an exceptional means of bringing about personal development and building

relationships among individuals, groups and nations.” Public education is not just

about developing an individual’s capacity to earn, it has a moral objective as well – to

tackle inequality. Public education must be about more than providing for the most

able – it must be about all. Our view as members of the NASUWT is that the moral

purpose of public education is grounded in the public service ethos, in social justice,

equality and democracy.

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But whether education alone can overcome the malign effects of poverty, poor

housing, neglect and abuse in all its forms is questionable.

Like many of your schools, my school, less than 15 miles from David Cameron’s

constituency home, has to provide a free breakfast for a growing number of our

students, for without this the first food to reach their bellies would not arrive until

lunchtime, which for us is 1.30 in the afternoon. As teachers we know that a hungry

child cannot concentrate on his or her learning: the brain needs fuel to operate

properly. Children who come to school too tired because their bedroom was so cold

they couldn’t sleep properly, they can’t concentrate properly either. We, as individual

teachers, can do little to control or ameliorate such factors, though I know that many

of us do what we can – bringing in food, spare clothing, and other resources to give

practical help to those children in greatest need. But the Government could and should

do more instead of giving priority to a policy of tax breaks for the immeasurably

wealthy.

The Coalition Government, in freezing school budgets and attacking teachers’ pay

through freezes or below inflation increases and via the pension tax on the grounds of

austerity, talk about the affordability of public education. Meanwhile, the rich are

getting richer. Professor Joan Benach of Barcelona University in Spain has found that

the 400 wealthiest US Citizens have the same wealth as the whole of Africa; and the

richest 1% of the world’s population have the same income as the 4.3 billion poorest.

Whilst politicians show greater concern to protect the obscene wealth of the very rich

than ameliorate the poverty of the most disadvantaged, we will not take the decisions

necessary to being greater equality and fairness to British society.

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Colleagues, we teachers love teaching – as survey after survey shows. But our

profession and our professionalism is attacked daily; our commitment to our students

is publicly derided for short-term political headlines. But despite this we go into

school every day, determined to do our best for those we teach. Parents know this and

we enjoy their confidence and support.

The Government needs to trust teachers too. Children and young people learn best

when the teachers are given the time, resources and scope to make the fullest possible

use of their professional talents.

5 Years ago I was invited to join my current school by its Headteacher, Fiona

Hammans, who had got to know me and appreciate my passion for serving the less

privileged members of our society. Fiona trusted me and allowed me to use my

professional judgement to assess the special needs of the school and to plan and

implement my programme to meet those needs. Language impoverishment was at the

root of much of the poor behaviour: our students had been taught how to ‘bark at

print’ but their reading comprehension was weak as a result of a very restricted

vocabulary. We developed “Intensive Literacy Programmes” which, in 3 weeks,

delivers an average improvement in reading comprehension of 10 months. Our

students feel their progress; they become more engaged in their learning; they reduce

their ‘acting out’; and they achieve greater academic success. Now, 5 years on, the

school, which had been struggling to meet the floor targets, is now one of the top 10

schools in Oxfordshire. I don’t claim that success as my own: teaching is a team effort

and we all rely on the work done by our colleagues. But because I, and other

colleagues, were given the time, resources and scope to make the fullest possible use

of our professional talents we made, and continue to make, a real difference.

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Respect for the professionalism of teachers is a hallmark of an education system that

is genuinely committed to raising standards and extending educational opportunity for

all pupils.

Research shows that it is the teacher’s contribution that matters most to pupils’

learning. By putting teachers first NASUWT recognises that the effective engagement

of teachers and school leaders is critical to securing high standards. This means

recognising teachers and headteachers as co-leaders of teaching and learning,

promoting professional collaboration and collegiality at all levels.

Under this Coalition Government teacher morale has dropped and continues to

decline. As I’ve visited schools and Local Associations this year I’ve heard accounts

of teachers afraid to voice opinions, afraid to take risks, afraid to exercise their

professional judgement in case it exposes them to criticism. This malign atmosphere,

which is tainted with the breath of Ofsted, is not one where innovation can flourish

and progress can be made: as in my own school, progress is made by allowing

teachers to exercise their professional judgement and in treating teachers as fellow

professionals.

We need to move the profession away from the simplistic box-ticking culture imposed

on schools by the way the current Inspection regimes operate, towards a culture where

recognising the need for self-improvement doesn’t lead to career destruction; where

improvement can take place in a supportive environment that excludes words like

‘failing’; where you can ask for help without it being a sign of weakness. We need to

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return to a collaborative approach where we offer help to our colleagues and receive it

from them in our turn. We need collegiality.

There is a lot we as teachers can do to affect students’ attitudes, motivation, progress

and achievement – and we do so daily. I think Steve would acknowledge that it was

partly my belief in his ability, re-iterated to him in his own home in front of his

mother and step-father (just as he was about to muck up his exams) that helped him to

return to learning in his early 20s, with a reference from me, to get into Exeter

University to study law and pass out with the prize for the best student of his cohort.

He became a Barrister and now has a law practice in the South-West. This sort of life-

changing mentoring takes place in schools throughout the country by dedicated

teachers: it’s just what we do.

But there are wider issues which must be considered too. Only a small proportion of a

child’s life is spent in school – about 23% of each year. And students are not immune

from the counter-influences they receive during the 77% of time they are not in

school. I remember Martin, one of my ‘rough diamonds’ and slightly more rough than

diamond, dropping into school one evening as I was running the Adult Education

Centre. He sat down but kept glancing anxiously out of the window to look at his

dozen or so ‘friends’ who were waiting, somewhat impatiently it seemed, for him to

re-emerge. After making conversation for about 5 minutes he got up and said, “I

suppose I might as well go and get my kicking” and went back outside. He was

pushed to the floor and his friends began to put the boot in. As I went out to try to

rescue him one of the group shouted, “Let’s get Mike”, at which Mike shot off,

pursued by the gang, for it was now his turn for a kicking. And Martin followed the

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crowd! Colleagues, it was this experience that made me realise that my nice, middle-

class conduct and mores were going to have a struggle to overcome the peer pressures

on Martin from his gang; that I was not working in isolation from the society that

Martin belonged to, but that his society was always going to look at me and what I

stood for through a somewhat distorting lens. It is the invaluable work done by our

colleagues in Youth Clubs and similar institutions that has a powerful impact on

groups such as Martin’s. Yet many of these centres, which previously provided

services that were highly complementary to the work of teachers are being closed and

their demise will impact on what we can achieve in school.

Colleagues, I am immensely proud to have spent my life working with pupils with

special educational needs, serving those most disadvantaged in life’s competitive race.

Like you, I have broken the poverty cycle for many of my students and in the process

enriched their lives and saved a small fortune for the country. Wouldn’t it be great if,

just for once, Ministers could acknowledge our contribution, congratulate us on our

achievements and say “Thank You”. Then I could exercise the last of my guiding

principles, forgiveness.

But until then colleagues, we need to remain resolute in our determination to bring

about honesty, justice, equality and compassion in Education.

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