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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE





Next NASUWT Junior Vice-President elected



(Photo of Geoff Branner)



NASUWT members have elected Geoff Branner as their next Junior Vice-President.



Mr Branner, a special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) who teaches in Banbury, will be formally introduced to members as Junior Vice-President at the 2012 Annual Conference, to be held in Birmingham.



Mr Branner said: “I’m delighted to be elected to this position. It is going to be a big challenge but I am really pleased to be getting into the thick of things.”



He had always wanted to serve as President of the Union, having been inspired by a former President, Colin Abraham.



He said: “I have had the ambition since day one of my teaching career, really. I remember then that Colin Abraham was Joint Vice-President. I realised then that any teacher from any school could do the same as him.”



Mr Branner, an NASUWT activist since 1973, teaches full time at Banbury School where he is Head of the Student Achievement Service.



He has held various positions within the lay structure of the Union, including School Representative, Negotiating Secretary and National Executive Member for District 28, where he oversaw a doubling of membership in nine years.



He was Vice-Chair of the National Recruitment Committee between 2009 and 2011 and served on the Staff Review Committee and Overseas Trained Teachers Project Board.



Mr Branner said: “I am determined to lead the NASUWT in strength, united in facing the challenges ahead, to deliver progress for teachers.



“As a full-time teacher, I want to retain professionalism, autonomy and a manageable workload to enable us to do what we do best – teach.”





School day shake-up



Schools in England now have the power to change the structure of the school day under reforms that could have significant implications for teachers.



The Coalition Government has removed the requirement on schools to consult staff and parents before making any alterations to the length of the school day.



The Department for Education (DfE) says the rules have been relaxed to give schools more ‘freedom’.



Education Secretary Michael Gove has praised schools that have longer teaching days, and the NASUWT believes that teachers’ working hours and workloads could increase as some schools seek to take advantage of the change in the law by extending their hours.



As a result of the change in the law, schools no longer have to give six weeks’ notice before changing the start and finish times of a school day or hold a written consultation with parents and staff.



Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said no rationale for scrapping the duty to consult has been presented by ministers and warned that the change could have a major impact on school staff.



“This potentially has a huge implication for the conditions of service of teachers and other school staff. Teachers already have among the longest working hours of any profession and members are struggling under the weight of increasing workloads.



“These changes, which were introduced without any consultation, could also create huge problems for parents and school staff in terms of their work and childcare commitments.”



Any proposals to change the school day should immediately be referred to the NASUWT.



Visit www.nasuwt.org.uk/EnglandConditionsOfService





’Crude ruse’ to increase academy numbers



Plans by Ofsted to scrap the ‘satisfactory’ inspection rating are a ploy designed to shore up the Government’s academies programme, the NASUWT has argued.



Hot on the heels of the introduction of the revised inspection framework, which sees schools now faced with no-notice inspections, Ofsted has announced that ‘satisfactory’ schools will now be subject to greater scrutiny and could be placed into special measures if they do not improve.



Sir Michael Wilshaw, the new Chief Inspector of Ofsted, stated that the reforms are designed to address what he described as the ‘stubborn’ number of ‘coasting schools’, where standards have remained satisfactory for two inspections in a row.



In future, these schools will be given a ‘requires improvement’ rating and will be subject to re-examination within 12-18 months. These schools will be examined twice in a three-year period and if they have not improved their grading at the end of this time they will be placed in special measures.



The NASUWT believes the changes are a way of propping up the Coalition’s academisation project. Education Secretary Michael Gove has previously stated that schools in special measures will be forcibly converted into academies.



The reality is that this has nothing to do with raising standards.



It is about ratcheting up the pressure on schools, without providing the support and resources they need to assist them in securing further improvements.



This announcement will encourage a culture of vicious management practices within schools that will have a profoundly negative effect on the workforce and children and young people alike.



This is nothing more than another crude ruse to enable the Secretary of State to push more schools into the hands of profitmaking, private companies.