Rabu, 30 Mei 2012

Now is the time to break the stranglehold of the teaching unions over British education

Now is the time to break the stranglehold of the teaching unions over British education

By Kathy Gyngell

PUBLISHED: 12:57 EST, 29 May 2012 | UPDATED: 12:02 EST, 30 May 2012

NASUWT and NUT have declared war. They have thrown down the gauntlet and Michael Gove has no option but to pick it up - and take them on. Mrs Thatcher did it with miners; Rupert Murdoch did it with the Print Unions and Bruce Gyngell did it with the TV Technicians. The Secretary of State for Education must follow in their footsteps and make breaking the Teachers' Unions his cause celebre.

He can leave one lasting legacy his Government could be proud of.

He knows better than anyone the education crisis our country is in. He knows that the teaching unions behind it have to be faced down sooner or later. Their inflexibility, self interest, hidebound ideology and political correctness have kept British education in a stranglehold for decades.

Problem: Education Secretary Michael Gove is acutely aware of the growing education crisis our country is facing

Problem: Education Secretary Michael Gove is acutely aware of the growing education crisis our country is facing

Now they are standing in the way of the reforms essential to its rescue; in the way of the man behind them on whom the nation is pinning its hopes.

We should be under no illusion about the scale of the problem Michael Gove faces â€" sometimes, it must seem to him, alone.

We are amongst the most advanced of Western economies yet half our working population is barely numerate.

More than a quarter of British children cannot add £2.36 and £1.49 to get £3.85. A quarter of 10 -12 year olds do not know their times tables.

Their English is no better.  22 per cent cannot use the correct version of 'they’re, there or their' in a sentence a recent survey tells us. Nearly a third cannot use an apostrophe correctly in a simple sentence. Nearly a half cannot spell ‘secretaries’ correctly.

Number crunching: A quarter of 10-12 year olds do not know their times tables

Number crunching: A quarter of 10-12 year olds do not know their times tables

In fact 20 per cent of children entering secondary school are not functionally literate at all (that means they have a reading age of less than 9 years and 6 months). One in ten cannot find the UK on a map. 40 per cent do not even know that the UK is in Europe.

Perhaps the most shattering indictment of all is that in London â€" the motor of the economy â€" there are one million adults who cannot read.

Now, after a decade of denial, the truth about exam dumbing down has been owned up to. Yes, GCSE’s have got easier.  Ever ‘improving’ results were little less than a lie sold to parents and public for a decade under Labour. Now we have it - an A grade GCSE in the UK is only worth a C in Hong Kong.

Persistent grade inflation that the sceptics always assumed is just that.  Glenys Stacey the new head of OffQual â€" the exams watchdog - says is impossible to justify. The DfE has been forced now to admit evidence of a decline in standards. 

But i t has taken a group of high achieving pupils, not the NUT mind you, to ask for an exam more rigorous than the rudimentary ‘citizen science’ currently studied in schools.

On most counts British teenagers are lagging behind their peers in other countries. Illiteracy is a personal tragedy and a social disaster. But so too is having the majority of our teenage population living in cloud cuckoo land about their abilities and what life owes them work wise as a result. They are in for bitter disappointment.  As is the UK as far as its global competitiveness is concerned.

These are the standards that poor schools and poor teacher practice produce. These are the schools and teachers that the so called progressive education movement - that our educational establishment and teaching unions so embraced - has moulded.

This is what happens when teachers ‘facilitate’ but don’t teach; when a child is never required to memorise or learn anything; where GCSEs and A levels have been stripped of their core academic content; where a ‘reading war’ over the reintroduction of phonics has been waged by teachers with a Taliban style zealotry.

And where exactly have the teachers unions stood in all this?

Schools are facing a wave of teacher walkouts in the autumn after the two biggest classroom unions joined forces to fight Coalition reforms

Schools are facing a wave of teacher walkouts in the autumn after the two biggest classroom unions joined forces to fight Coalition reforms

What concern have they expressed over nationally declining standards? When have they reflected on their role in this process? 

Christine Blower’s and Chris Keates’s ‘Joint Declaration of Intent’ gives the answer.

Not at all.

Rather it is an unashamedly ideologically driven manifesto against reform. They do not disguise their loathing of the academies programme. Chris Keates, the head of the NASUWAT, is blatantly hostile to private education. 

Since Michael Gove took over they have done nothing but carp, complain and criticise â€" whether about unannounced Ofsted inspections, toughening inspection ratings, or the introduction of more meaningful reading tests.

Now, with an unimaginable hubris, they have declared war on him. Their manifesto of complaints from unacceptable and excessive work load pressures, making teachers work to 68 to get their full pension, to ‘unfair pension contribution increases and to threats to jobs arising from curriculum reforms, is one of pure and blatant self interest.

On this they threaten to hold the country to ransom by withholding our children’s’ education. It is a bad move.

Issues: NUT general secretary Christine Blower has said that Mr Gove is 'one of the least popular secretaries of state we've ever had'

Issues: NUT general secretary Christine Blower has said that Mr Gove is 'one of the least popular secretaries of state we've ever had'

It puts them on a par with the greedy TV Technicians Unions of the past who held their companies to ransom with huge demands for overtime and weekend working. If the unions made a demand, ITV would do what the Unions said; if not then it was Industrial Action

But the lesson from history that Ms Blower and Ms Keates should learn is unions get defeated when right is not on their side.

When, back in 1987 at TV-am Bruce Gyngell got wind of the fact that technical staff at the station (the ACCT) were planning an unannounced a 24-hour strike he got in first. He locked out the strikers but kept the programme on air â€" staffed by a management team of 17.  After months of the journalists and the presenters crossing the picket line, as ratings went up and as the programme became even more popular,  Bruce, his Board and his management team took the decision to fire all of the strikers. He replaced them with non-unionised labour from around the world.

As Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher showed before him, Bruce demonstrated that you could take the unions on and win.  Not just TV-am, until the end of its franchise,  but ITV too, who had suffered a decade long winter of discontent from the ACCT, went on to live another day.

It should be a salutary lesson for the teachers. There have been no ITV strikes since.  A merged and reduced technicians union with less than half its previous membership only survived.

'£2million of equipment lying unused? Good, that’s a victory for us.' Alan Sapper, General Secretary of the ACTT, had said in the throes of the strike.

But he got his comeuppance.  So too may Christine Blower and Chris Keates if they close schools across the country with their millions of pounds of equipment unavailable to our children.

A leaked briefing from Gove's chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, which lambasts the unions for their 'refusal to face reality over grade inflation and the d umbing down of exams', suggests they understand this.

The teachers' unions are ripe for challenging. The ineffective teachers these two unions represent fear accountability. Like the technicians unions they do not want their routine practices exposed.

There will be little sympathy for them. Parents lost faith with the NUT years ago.  So I suspect have the thousands of principled and professionally minded teachers who simply want to be able to get on a teach children properly and behave professionally.

Right is on Michael Gove’s side.  There is no way he should concede to talks on these terms. Rather he should be prepared for a negative ballot and be ready to act.

His objective should be that no school closes as a result of strike action. No child should lose a day’s education.  He should show that teachers who strike can be dispensed with.

It will take guts and advance planning.  But no one has sympathy for special case pension demands. No one believes that teachers have some prior right to be absolved from economic measures that affect everyone.

So Michael and Dominic, bring it on! The moment could not be better.  You have surplus of newly qualified teachers ready to step into the strikers shoes. You have the summer holidays to plan and to recruit a back up army of retired teachers! They stepped up to plate in the war. Why not now?

Here's what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.

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"He should show that teachers who strike can be dispensed with." You see Kathy that's where your argument falls down - we are talking about teachers here not third rate journalists and CPS groupies - teachers who know what they are doing and have been trained to do one of the most important jobs in society - not, as I say, mere hacks whose contribution to the well being of society is precisley nothing. As I have often said before in relation to the columnist who pour out their bile here, this forum is called Right Minds not Bright Minds and boy don't you just prove it Kathy..

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Is this the same Michael Gove who wants to write a foreward in new copies of The Bible? Who on Earth would take anything this lunatic says or thinks seriously? Of course, idiot DM columnists.

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Time we had value for money,in our Education System.The Teachers Unions are ripe to be bought down.

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The whole article is a ridiculous example of DM hyperbole. Just a couple of reflections… Exactly how is "dumbing down" of exams the fault of teachers? Exams are written by exam boards who compete in a free market. Clearly, the easier an exam is to pass, the more appealing it will be to schools, especially in a league-table environment. While I could imagine teaching until 68 in a leafy postcode, or public school, it cannot be right to expect the same of those who teach in more challenging schools. Whatever the learned Ms Gyngell may believe, the modern classroom is no place for for the elderly, especially if they are to keep pace with the daily pronouncements of Ofsted and Gove. Finally, in terms of their "resistance to reform" why shouldn't teachers oppose the Tory ideology that have resulted in a complete disassembly of all the subject support networks that used to provide teacher training? This is but one example of the impact of the academies program.

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Typical govt ploy: run a public service into the ground, so it falls into disrepute and can then be 'saved' by the 'caring, sharing' private sector - where PROFIT rules!! And surely no coincidence that so many of our mps just happen to have vested interests in these private companies - and the DM??.............

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Education ? Should be reclassified as 'Indoctrination' .

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You need to spell out the case more about poor educational standards in this country. Whilst you have mentioned en passant about other countries having higher education standards you should also add that the EU is saying today that the poor educational standards in the UK are and will continue to hinder the UK's attempts to pull out of recession and achieve growth. Many employers know that it is not just a poor work ethic amongst an element of the youth today but the lack of proper educational achievements which are needed to be an effective member of the workforce. You should also be asking Liebour if they are proud of their achievements and if they are remind them that it just shows what low standards Liebour are prepeared to accept which would not be the case in other countries which explains why other countries are far ahead of us in achieveing growth in their economies. No doubt left wing teachers will be red arrowing me but then that says it all about them!

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If Directors are allowed to have "unions" (the Institute of Directors) and other industrialists also (the CBI, for instance) why is that "ordinary workers" are not allowed to have unions? I sit because that might give them the 'power' to stand up for their rights or - in the case of the teachers - look after their members when they are falsely accused of various assaults etc. by pupils and parents who want to join the 'sue them for anything' culture that our current greedy society promotes. Ah, greed, where do we get that idea from.....? (not actually the unions, for sure!!!)

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What a good article Kathy my congratulations to you. You have just bravely pointed out that the education system in the UK is run for the benefit of teachers and not the people who matter the children. I and a good many more have been saying this for more than a decade, maybe now something will be done. Pupils are the first priority not Teachers.

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If you research the background of the author of this article you will see that what she has written is nothing more than Tory propaganda. In publishing this as a piece of "opinion" the DM is deceiving its readers.

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