National pay and conditions for support staff

24. COMPOSITE

From resolutions submitted by Cheshire and North Wales branches.

THAT Conference, while welcoming the improvement in work-life balance that the Workload Agreement has, in principle, brought to teachers, deplores the ensuing exploitation experienced by support staff.

Conference requests that the Executive Committee lobbies for the forthcoming national pay and conditions structure to reward and develop the professionalism of support staff and ensure all who are involved in the direct day-to-day teaching of children are treated fairly.

Proposer: Marjorie Barnes, Flint High School, Flint

         Seconder: Stuart Hart, Fallibroome High School, Cheshire

 

Centralised CRB check

41. CHESHIRE BRANCH

THAT Conference believes that one of the simplest things that could be done to assist all supply teachers would be the availability of a centralised source of up-to-date CRB checks to which every employer, or prospective employer, could have access upon request without the need for a new process to be undertaken for every new employer.

Proposer: Stuart Hart, Fallibroome High School, Cheshire

          Seconder: Ian Bonner, Unattached member

 

School inspections

54. CHESHIRE BRANCH

THAT Conference recognises how OfSTED inspections may find weaknesses in leadership together with satisfactory or better teaching and learning. Conference believes that any consequences of such findings should be targeted at the weaknesses.

Conference requests the Executive Committee to work to ensure that in such circumstances the senior leadership should bear the brunt of any interventions.

Proposer: Ian Bonner, Unattached member

         Seconder: Bruce Murdin, Halton School, Cheshire

 

Tests and benchmark culture

55. COMPOSITE

From resolutions submitted by Bradford, Cheshire, Coventry, Hertfordshire, and Inner London branches and the Executive Committee.

THAT Conference congratulates the Government for listening to teachers and removing key stage 3 tests and congratulates ATL on its consistent and forthright opposition to these tests which has brought this about. However, Conference deplores the decision by most secondary schools to impose the tests on pupils and staff in 2009 and the continued benchmark culture, which reduces a child to a statistic and is in direct conflict with the tenets of ECM. Conference believes that education should get back to basics and recognises that any reductions in members’ workload brought about by the introduction of PPA time are increasingly being eroded by the demands for more data analysis, detailed lesson planning and assessment with their associated bureaucracy.

 

Conference endorses the advice of the Executive Committee on appropriate assessment policy in secondary schools and urges the Executive Committee to:

(i) intensify the campaign to abolish key stage 2 tests and league tables and fight for the right of every child to achieve their own success at their natural rate of learning and never to be subject to individual targeting or categorised as failures;

(ii) campaign for the return of enjoyment in teaching and learning;

(iii) address these issues as a matter of urgency within the Social Partnership and by working, as far as possible, with the other education unions.

  Proposer: Jean Roberts, Old Oak Primary School, London

  Seconder: Ian Bonner, Unattached member

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