‘Put pupils first – give teachers time to teach!’

The theme of our Congress is ‘Put pupils first – give teachers time to teach!’

This is what SSTA members stood together and pushed for in our struggle against teacher and pupil workload in our ballot in the autumn of 2016.

An excellent return in the ballot with a 91% vote in favour of taking ‘Action Short of Strike Action’ with a 40.8% turnout. This was not an easy decision for SSTA members to take. I am proud to say, their pupils and their pride in education is always their priority.

Why do teachers drag themselves into schools when they are unwell, put up with poor wages, lack of a professional career structure, teacher shortages, work long hours, endure ever decreasing support and resources, put their health, families and relationships at risk?

I will tell you why? Because teachers care and despite all the changes, new initiatives and whims of politicians, teachers try to make it work for the benefit of the pupils in their classrooms, because they only get one chance.

So I say congratulations to you for sticking together and challenging the pressures applied to you by supporting our industrial action. The battle is not over and there is a good distance to cover. But we will succeed because we have to. If we don’t, we would be failing the pupils we care for most and our cherished education service.

The way teachers are treated is nothing less than systematic abuse. Unfortunately, this is not confined to Scotland but is a similar picture for teachers across the world. We need to bring to an end to this teacher abuse and ensure that teachers are valued and rewarded for the important role that they play in the lives of our young people.

The First Minister has pledged to put education at the heart of her government's programme for the year ahead.

"Education is at the heart of our plans and I am committed to doing all I can to improve the life chances of every child and young person.

"Ensuring children are able to learn in new, modern, fit for purpose surroundings is a crucial part of this.

"By the end of this parliament we will have delivered 112 new or refurbished schools across every local authority in Scotland - more than double the number envisaged when the schools for the future programme started."

But without a valued professional teacher in every classroom, and without education support staff and resources, her best intentions cannot and will not be delivered. Whether the First minister likes it or not the teacher in the classroom is the first and most important education resource.

Teacher Workload

The SSTA industrial action began on 24 October 2016to give teachers back control of their time and we needed the ballot to give security to our members in schools. Teachers need to focus on teaching and learning, and put to one side those duties and tasks that do not help the teacher in the classroom. We are making progress. More and more of our members are saying NO or more politely ‘thank you very much for your kind offer of more work but I will decline the offer on this occasion’.

The SSTA has campaigned for a number of years to reduce teacher workload in all aspects of a teacher’s work but especially in the senior phase. The SSTA asked for a more measured implementation of the new national qualifications but the government moved forward regardless.

It came as no surprise to SSTA members that the accountability and micromanagement systems contained within the National Qualifications forced teachers and pupils to breaking point.

However, there is no satisfaction in knowing you were right all along. It is so important to listen to the teachers in the classroom, not to give importance to the views of those not involved in the ‘day to day’ business of teaching. Those who actually do the job. The SSTA represents the views of teachers at all levels in secondary schools and should be listened to.

The Deputy First Minister said last year in relation to the changes to National 5

“This will help to reduce unnecessary workload for teachers and learners. It is not enough to have good teachers if they do not have the time and space to do their job. That is why groups like this are essential to help us strip away anything that creates unnecessary workload for the profession”-

The SSTA survey on National 5 changes, conducted in early February highlighted the increases in workload across all subjects. Teachers were told to expect changes to Assessment arrangements but not to course content. As we all know the changes announced in the last few weeks will again increase workload with the courses in many school already begun, without time to consider and implement the changes.

Unfortunately, I can predict, with the rush to make changes we will find that the SSTA was right again but the powers that be do not always want to hear.

The Deputy First Minister told us at our Council meeting back in October that he wanted to reduce teacher workload and has taken steps to bring about change. But change in education, as we know, does take time and longer than the six months the Minister asked for.

As for other measures taken by the Deputy First Minister to reduce teacher workload

Education Scotland conducted a Local Authority Review on Tackling Workload and made a statement on Broad General Education.

Inspectors looked at: what support and guidance for schools and teachers the local authority had in place; what the local authority required schools and teachers to do; and any specific guidance the local authority had provided on how to reduce bureaucracy/workload. Some of our District Secretaries didn’t recognise their local authorities from the report.

The Deputy First Minister expected a positive response from SSTA but the SSTA Survey at the time showed 68% of SSTA members said the document would not have an impact in reducing teacher workload. A further 14% said the document would actually increase their workload. The over-riding view is that it would have little impact in Secondary Schools.

The inspection of Local Authorities needs to be followed-up with further action to be taken. I am not sure if that was ever intended. The review must not be just left on the shelf like other well-meaning documents.

Bench Marks

The Bench Marks for all curriculum areas were published in March. The lack of ‘meaningful consultation’ is a concern to us but they have been mostly welcomed by secondary teachers. However, the usual rule applies: ‘Just give it to teachers and they will make it work’. They have been rushed through without any time given for teachers and departments to be consulted with, or time to understand and implement into existing courses. Again, another good intended action but without a teacher workload assessment being undertaken.

Standardised Assessment

These tests for children in P1, P4, P7 and S3 will take place next year covering reading, writing and numeracy. The online tests will take 50 minutes, they will not be marked by teachers and there will be no pass or fail. The assessments will be completed online and automatically marked by the online system. The Scottish government said the information produced by the tests would help teachers raise attainment amongst schoolchildren.

Again training time for managing the tests and using the evidence produced has not been allocated and it will be left for the teacher to undertake in their own time.

It is interesting that this method of assessment together with the teachers professional judgment is sufficient for pupils up to S3 but not been considered for pupils in S4. Most pupils stay in education beyond S4 yet we persist with an archaic over burdensome, damaging to pupils and a totally unnecessary SQA system for pupils in S4. My advice to the Minister is to reduce teacher workload and pupil stress by finding a better way for continuous assessment in the senior phase.

The bottom line is that the SSTA industrial action guidance is quite clear: if you are not allocated time within the schools Working Time Agreement then the work cannot be done.

The teacher shortage

Teacher recruitment is an increasing problem across Scotland and will have a damaging impact on the students and teachers in the long-term. Teachers are ‘papering over the cracks’ and trying to keep the system afloat. All available teacher time is being used to continue the service. Many teachers with management and specialist roles in the school are being used to cover classes due to the lack of supply, particularly subject-specific supply. These teachers are being abused by the education system.

Our recent Survey of school reps showed

• 81% of main scale teachers were being timetable up to the maximum 22.5 hours a week
• 37% of principal Teachers were being timetabled between 20 and the maximum 22.5 hours a week
• 41% of teachers were covering 3 hours or more a week
• 67% of schools found it very difficult to get supply teachers

Measures used by schools to manage the teacher shortage

• 28% of schools regularly split National Qualification classes with 44% occasionally
• 21% of schools regularly collapsed classes with 40% doing so occasionally
• 12% regularly left senior classes unsupervised with a further 30% doing so occasionally
• 7% of schools regularly gathered classes together in a hall or sports hall with a further 25% doing so occasionally
• 5% of teachers were regularly taking classes above timetable allocation with a further 33% doing so occasionally

The failure to provide supply teachers and fill vacancies promptly is often seen as an attempt by local authorities to save money. However, this is a false economy as when teacher workload increases; teacher stress increases, teacher absence also increases.

The GTCS found in 2016 there were 861 lapsed teachers aged 21-45. It sought reasons why teachers were leaving the register. The GTCS found

14.5% cited change in family circumstances

- Some teachers need to stop or reduce their work for a period of time, for example to care for children or elderly relatives, but this can be difficult to quantify and manage.  Few employers, if any, now offer teachers job share opportunities which were seen by many as a great way of working in a family friendly way.  Although many local authorities claim to be 'family friendly,' the reality is that it is much harder to work around an employer than a job share partner.  Working part-time can be a solution, but teachers I have spoken to tell me that even working 3 days a week results is what many would consider a full time job.

12% were taking a career break

- Although some employers offer career breaks on paper, often they can be reluctant to actually grant them in practice, particularly for promoted teachers.   I know of cases where the employer has asked those seeking career breaks to resign, which in my view is short sighted and lacking an understanding of the benefits a well-planned career break can bring to the teacher (eg time for reflection), to their pupils (eg enhanced experience), to colleagues (eg opportunities for temporary promotion) and to the employer (eg opportunities for staff development).

10.4% cited high workloads

- Workload is widely regarded to be at an unsustainable level and is impacting on the mental health and wellbeing of the whole school community.  Some teachers are unwilling to continue to put their health at risk.

12% had changed career

- Teachers have wide-ranging skills and good qualifications which are relevant to many careers as well as education.  In some cases they are choosing to use their skills and qualifications elsewhere.

12.9% were unable to secure a job in Scotland

- Being on a supply register for an extended period or on a temporary contract can present budgeting difficulties and can make it hard to arrange loans and mortgages.   Despite being qualified to teach, it is understandable that some teachers prefer to find non-teaching employment which offers regular pay and career progression rather than hanging about waiting for a teaching job.

13.2% had gone to teach abroad

- Some teachers are attracted to better salaries and working conditions on offer in other countries.  Working abroad offers a different perspective and opens up different opportunities. Often to raise a deposit for a home back in Scotland.

5% had decided teaching wasn't for them.

- It is inevitable that some people will not find teaching to their liking.  Teaching is a bit like being a performer for several hours a day with a very critical audience which does not hesitate to make its feelings known.  There are other jobs which have different demands.

The Teacher is the key to Scotland’s Future

The Scottish Government is determined to bring about improvements in Education by ‘closing the attainment gap’ and give all young people the opportunity to fulfil their potential. The focus must be on the teacher/pupil relationship and how the structures in and outside the school are developed to support this relationship is an important element in ‘closing the attainment gap’.

The Teacher in the Classroom

The subject teacher in a secondary school focuses on establishing the relationship with the pupils. Whilst planning, preparing, delivering and assessing the lesson the teacher also assesses the pupil progress and identifies strengths and weaknesses. The teacher uses their professional judgement and builds on this knowledge in future lessons.

• We need teachers to focus on teaching and learning with a reduction of other tasks
• With the demands placed on teachers today we need a reduction in the 22.5 hours teaching week
• With the nature of our curriculum and changes to methods of teaching more subjects need to be recognised as ‘practical’ and in turn benefit pupils by being in smaller classes

The Subject Specialist

The Principal Teacher of subject in the past was a great strength of the Scottish Education system. Unfortunately, due to changes in schools’ management structures over a number of years, the Principal Teacher of subject has been in steady decline. Most schools today do not have a teacher in the school responsible for keeping abreast of subject developments and acting as the leader and manager of a number of subject teachers.

It is unreasonable to expect all subject teachers in a large department, at the same level, to accept responsibility and carry out this function independently. To develop the subject expertise, encourage leadership and rationalise workload there is a need to see a return to the subject specialist in secondary schools. Please also note that in 2010 the Chartered Teacher scale was brought to a close.

• We need recognition and reward of experienced teacher of subjects and a real and meaningful extension to the existing teacher main pay scale

The Management Structure

There has been a conscious move in many local authorities to move away from principal teacher of subjects to a faculty structure across the school. The appointment of a senior principal teacher to manage a number of subjects is a sensible way forward and gives the teacher a more senior responsibility. This experience enables the post holder to progress to a more senior position in the school.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the teacher, in addition to managing a number of departments, is given a range of ‘whole school’ responsibilities. The impact of these additional responsibilities moves the teacher further away from the departments they were appointed to manage, without the support of senior teacher of subjects.

In 2010 there were 8,216 promoted posts in secondary schools and in 2016 the number fell to 6,758, a loss of 1,458 posts or 18% of promoted posts.

At the same time the number of teachers in secondary schools fell from 24,776 to 22,957. That is a loss of 1,819 teaching posts.

As promoted teachers left a school the posts went with them. The only reason was to cut money and increase the workload of those left behind.

The reduced management structure has created a ‘major’ step from being a subject teacher to a principal teacher managing a number of subjects. This step is viewed by most teachers as a ‘step too far’. There are very few opportunities for teachers to gain experience to enable them to move into middle leadership positions. The main focus of the principal teacher who manages a number of subject areas is supporting teaching and learning in those areas.

As for teachers who undertake a range of ‘whole school responsibilities,’ these should be accommodated within a more senior position in the school and seen as a ‘stepping stone’ to gain knowledge and experience before aspiring to become a depute headteacher.

• The priority of the principal teacher who manages a number of subject areas is supporting teaching and learning in those areas.
• We need the establishment of management posts that manage a number of ‘whole school’ responsibilities
• And crucially we demand that Depute and Headteachers have manageable, not unmanageable posts with appropriate additional support inside and outside the school.

The Teacher Retention and Recruitment Crisis

Scotland is facing a deepening crisis in retaining and recruiting teachers and headteachers in its schools. The Scottish Government needs to acknowledge that teachers working conditions and remuneration have failed to keep pace with the rapidly changing education environment. Schools and teachers needs to adapt to meet the demands of a modern education system.

As a consequence teaching is increasingly perceived as an unattractive profession with an impossible workload demand, restricted career path and an uncompetitive salary scale.  Addressing the structure of schools and its workforce are essential elements in the Scottish Government challenge to ‘close the attainment gap’.

The Teacher Career Structure

The removal of the Chartered Teacher scale (originally intended to keep good teachers in the classroom) has created a ‘glass ceiling’ that new teachers reach relatively quickly. There is little opportunity for advancement which is creating a problem in keeping and motivating these teachers in the profession.

The numbers of posts of responsibility have reduced by nearly 1:5 over six years this has closed down the opportunities for teachers to gain experience, responsibility, career advancement and incentives to remain in teaching.

The normal promotional ladder expects classroom teachers to become principal teacher managing a number of departments without any subject management experience. Once promoted to principal teacher, managing a number of departments, the next move is to the post of depute headteacher.

• 38% of Principal Teachers were given between 2 and 3 hours management time per week with a further 18% being given no management time to undertake the responsibility
• 21% of Depute Headteachers were being timetabled for 5 or more hours per week. Whilst 29% of Deputes had no timetabled teaching commitment
• 24% of Headteachers had a timetabled up to 4 hours a week

The only other way to get promotion is through the pastoral and pupil support route but unfortunately this has limited posts of responsibility and increasingly unmanageable workload. An inappropriate Job Sizing Toolkit that does not recognise the remit of the job does not help.

The difficulties in recruiting new headteachers reflects the unmanageability of the post and the reluctance from experienced depute headteachers who have identified the scale of the problem.

• A need for a career structure that gives opportunities to gain experience and responsibility across the education system that recognises the long-term commitment of the teacher

Teacher Salaries (the facts)

The salary scales for teachers and headteachers have become uncompetitive and do not recognise the value, commitment and importance of the teacher workforce in Scotland.

An unpromoted teacher at the top of the main scale has a salary of £35,763 (point 6). Due the removal of the Charter teacher scale the teacher could have reached a salary of £43,845 (a difference of £8,028).

An unpromoted teacher in England at the top of the upper pay spine has a salary of £38,250 (a difference of £2,487). An unpromoted FE Lecturer in Scotland, following the pay agreement, can reach a salary of  £40,026 (a difference of £4,263).

A headteacher in Scotland can aspire to a maximum salary of £86,319 whilst a headteacher in England outside of London can aspire to a maximum salary of £108,283 (a difference of £21,964). Are the jobs £21,964 different? Of course they are not

• We need a salary scale that is competitive and crucially retains the teachers we have and also inspires recruits into teachers

The Governance Review

The Deputy First Minister has said he intends to move forward with reforms

The SSTA supports the Government’s determination to bring about improvements in Education by ‘closing the attainment gap’ and giving all young people the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

SSTA would argue for a process of review followed by improvements rather than major structural change. The SSTA believe that structural change only diverts energies and resources away from the main challenge of ‘closing the attainment gap’.

The Government has chosen to use its ‘Governance Review’ as the vehicle to look at the agencies and structures involved in education to ‘empower teachers, parents and communities to achieve excellence and equity in education’.

Unfortunately this review does not include the people and the structures in the school that support teaching and learning.

The SSTA believes that the Government needs to place the pupil/teacher relationship at the centre – this relationship and how we best support it is the paramount consideration. Structure is only important insofar as they support and nurture teaching and learning in the pupil/teacher relationship.

I will focus my comments on just three areas

1) Local Authorities

The Local Authority is the management arm of the education system. It is in the interest of the community that all young people reach their full potential. As the elected representative of the community that the Local Authority is the body that needs to play its role in supporting the learning taking place in schools and, where necessary, seek improvement. It is essential that local schools feel part of the community. The direction of the school should be determined by the community that is able to see the long term plan and benefits.

The Local Authority should be the focus for parents, colleges, universities and local employers to better support efforts to raise attainment of all young people. Schools alone are unable to see the complete picture and therefore must work in partnership with Local Authorities to meet the needs of all young people.

The Local Authorities have the ability to bring together all local services to support pupils and their families in their journey through school. The Local Authority should play an important part in removing burdens and obstacles from teachers and headteachers and allow them to exert all their energies on learning.

As there is a growing recruitment crisis for head teacher and deputy posts, further devolving of powers to headteachers is another burden on the professionals and will merely exacerbate the recruitment situation.  In some respect, this step would be regarded as adding to bureaucracy, rather than improving education outcomes for children and young people. The priority should be to identify those tasks that can be taken away from teachers and headteachers and undertaken more efficiently by those more suitable and qualified within the Local Authority.

Local Authorities should be bringing schools together by building upon the natural school clusters. This includes primary, secondary and colleges as well as schools within the same sector and across Local Authority boundaries with similar challenges. The Local Authority should be managing all education staff across the Authority building capacity and ensuring all young people in every school have access to the best experienced teachers and support systems.

Creating new education regions would just create more bureaucracy. This would undermine the role of the Local Authority by putting additional unwanted pressure, responsibility and bureaucracy on teachers and headteachers in schools.

Local Authorities have an important role in retaining, recruiting and managing all education staff. Decentralising these functions to the schools just adds more bureaucracy and takes the focus away from teaching and learning. Local authorities need to collaborate across Authority boundaries to ensure there are a sufficient number of teachers, headteachers and supply teachers in our schools.

The Local Authority needs to identify and create opportunities for all teachers to reach their full potential whether in the classroom or in management positions in schools. Good examples of collaboration would be a national supply teacher register, a joint recruitment strategy, developing leadership programmes, and a national professional development network for all education staff.

2) Education Scotland

Education Scotland should be the implementation arm of the Scottish Government.

Education Scotland should be the driving force for curriculum development and excellence. It should see itself as responsible and accountable for the delivery of the curriculum in every school. Education Scotland should not be independent of the schools and Local Authorities but working in partnership with and be responsible for the education in our schools.

The SSTA would recommend that the Inspectorate focus its efforts on Local Authorities rather than schools. Local Authorities should be the driving force for excellence in schools for all young people. The Inspectorate should seek naturally occurring evidence in the schools to support the work of the Local Authorities.

Local Authorities should be responsible for managing, challenging, supporting and developing schools. The Inspectorate focus on individual schools has created barriers to collaboration across schools and the sharing experiences and expertise that are to the detriment of the system.

3) Fair Funding or just spreading the existing money in different directions

The Government wishes to establish a fair and transparent needs-based funding formula for schools and make sure that more money goes direct to headteachers.

This issue is a constant headache as a formula based on Free School Meals alone cannot guarantee that the money goes where it’s needed. It would be far better to trust the judgement of the teachers, the professionals in the classrooms, to identify the need of every individual young person. The challenge would be for Government to meet this need with the appropriate resource.

Fair Funding or further delegation to schools can only work when ‘new’ money is made available. There will always be winners and losers in this type of reform and those you intend to benefit rarely do. New money is needed to give all young people the same life chances.

Education International has stated there is a need to establish, support and promote Global Guidelines for Establishing Teacher-led Professional Teaching Standards.

Education International asserted that enabling professional space and time for educators and educational support personnel is a precondition for the successful implementation of such a framework.

Education reforms need to be contextually relevant and, therefore, education policy dialogue needs to start at the classroom level with education unions at the centre as social partners. Administrators and bureaucrats should be prevented from taking the lead in identifying education policy issues and new solutions. Those who do the work on the ground - teachers and education support personnel - need to be empowered and actively involved before, during and after changes to education policies.

The recent criticisms of our education system by our politicians following the Programme for International Assessment (PISA) and Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) are unfair and unnecessary.

It is worth remembering that these tests were not constructed to assess pupil progress in our Curriculum for Excellence. Nor do they take into account all the changes that teachers and pupils have had to endure in the education system over a long number of years. Never mind years and years of austerity measures (Cuts and more Cuts) to our schools and communities.

It is the responsibility of and the duty of our Government and politicians to defend our excellent education system and find solutions to the challenges we face together.

A message to our politicians. Please stop using education as a political football and using it as a way of scoring points against each other. It is unforgivable. Education is too important to play political games with and you do more damage to education and its image every time you run-down education.

Every time you run down and undermine education another young person chooses not to follow a career path into teaching and another group of teachers’ walks out the school gate.

It is now time for Government to invest in its teaching workforce. Not just by providing professional learning opportunities. Now is the time is to end austerity measures. Austerity policies are a political choice to reduce public services. It is time to move away the austerity mentality and invest in Education, invest in teachers, invest in Scotland’s young people and Scotland’s future.

It is time to Put Pupils First and Give Teachers Time to Teach

/ENDS

Further information from:

Seamus Searson
General Secretary

Presidential Address, SSTA Congress 2017
Crieff Hydro, Friday 19 May 2017

Welcome once again to our annual Congress.  One of the great pleasures for me at Congress is the way in which the Association comes together from all over the country.  It’s our opportunity to collaborate and find ways of moving Scottish education forward, and we are fortunate in having guests from a number of professional associations and other educational organisations here with us today.  As my term of presidential office draws to a close, once again I’d like to thank my employer North Ayrshire Council and my school Kilwinning Academy for their support in this leadership role, the General Secretary Seamus Searson and all of the Association staff for their help, and of course my wife Louisa and our family for their encouragement and support.

Sometimes you hear people say, “The apple never falls far from the tree.”  That’s certainly true in my case; both my grandfathers were a secondary teachers in Glasgow, one was Laurie Gardner, the other Alf Duncan, both totally committed to their students, both passionate about what they did.  I’ll tell you a bit more about Grandpa Alf Duncan later because his story is part of the SSTA story.

One of the first things you see when you enter the SSTA offices is a certificate from the Lord Lyon King of Arms granting the Association the right to use the heraldic arms, the Association crest.

That same certificate also contains the aims of our Association:

• To advance education in Scotland
• To safeguard and promote the interests of Scottish secondary teachers in all matters, especially those which affect salaries and conditions of service.

When Congress meets, it does so to reflect on those aims: to advance education, and to safeguard and promote Secondary teachers’ professional interests.  Our debates today and tomorrow, and what we hear from our guests and discuss with them, are about moving forward and improving education for young people.  The expertise and energy of teachers is the beating heart of Scottish education.  Without a dynamic and specialist teaching profession nothing can be improved, the young workforce cannot be developed, it would be impossible to raise attainment.

Today I will speak about getting it right for every child, the need for time to do this, and the value of good leadership.

Education is a creative force which has never stood still and will never stand still.  Educators are getting it right for every child by being innovators, serving young people by keeping pace with the rapid societal and economic changes. This is a good thing, but it needs to be managed in a well-led sustainable way.  The world is changing: people’s social anchors are moving (think of the growth and influence of social media), climate change is happening (any news to the contrary is fake), and global populations are ageing.  Teaching is becoming harder.

Recent news headlines have told us stories of global fragmentation and destabilisation.  The world has grappled with the issue of those fleeing war and persecution.  In places education has come under attack and those responsible for bringing youngsters to a mature understanding of the world have been increasingly undervalued in the face of austerity.

The days of a job for life have gone.  Researchers predict that today’s young people may have as many as 12 to 15 jobs in a lifetime.  The Institute for Public Policy Research this month published the Scotland Skills 2030 report, stating that nearly half of Scottish jobs could be automated in less than 15 years.  The foundations of deep learning and the ability to transfer skills are more important now than ever before.

Our role as educators is to ensure young people have the competencies they need for life.  More than ever we work tirelessly to move them beyond the simple ability to pass an exam and to ensure that they have the right foundations for lifelong learning .

In spite of, or perhaps because of the austerity agenda, groups of teachers have worked together to seek stability, to foster equitable approaches to education for all, and to emphasise the need for an energetic expert workforce.  The voice of teachers, through the democratic processes of their unions, must rise above the din of political whim and spin to be heard clearly.  We must hold up a hand and count to three until we are heard.

One of my duties at the end of last year was to attend a brilliant conference on Refugee Education organised by Education International in Stockholm where a landmark museum caught my imagination and offered some interesting lessons.   Prior to catching my flight home I had a couple of hours to spare, and rather than the ABBA experience I decided to see the Vasa museum.  Now situated by the harbour, the Vasa was a warship built on the orders of the King of Sweden in the late 1620s.  The King of Sweden wanted the ship to symbolize his personal and national ambitions and commissioned a ship, the design of which was completely new.    Using money from private enterprise the King wanted the ship to have not one but two gun decks.  The King himself chose really big and heavy bronze cannons.

The result was a fantastic looking ship which was dangerously unstable and top heavy.  There was simply too much weight in the upper part of the hull and insufficient ballast.  None of the King’s subordinates had the courage to tell him that his design was flawed.  Rather than postponing, the ship set out on its maiden voyage on 10 August 1628.   Less than a mile from the dock it capsized under a slight gust of wind, taking with it around 40 people’s lives.  It lay at the bottom of the Baltic for another 333 years before being raised and brought back to dock to stand as a salutary and tragic lesson to all who desire to innovate without advice.

What did I take from this? Four things.

Firstly, beware of politicians.  When it comes to education, we the educators are the ballast, we are the real experts, not politicians.  Because the SSTA is non-political, not aligned with any party, we are free to comment on the policies of every and any political party.  If the politicians don’t hear from the experts they court disaster.  Politicians have a duty to listen, we have a duty to make our voices heard.  With a General Election only days away, our votes will matter. Take a close look at the education section of each party’s manifesto and ask yourself: What are the educational aims of this party? How will they affect me and the youngsters I teach?  Is this about education or political ideology?  Two weeks ago I heard one of the Government’s Senior International Advisers, Andy Hargreaves, speaking.  He didn’t mince his words, stating, “England is now a policy vacuum. No character, no focus, no sense of what England’s citizens, its young people should become. Just markets, academies, grammar schools. Choice, fracturing, segregation. More of the inequalities that separate each of us from all the others around us. More intersecting identities less interacting identities.”  What do we want for education in Scotland?  Certainly not a business-driven model, defunded and starved of resources, putting profit before pupils.

Secondly, the captain of the Vasa knew it wasn’t seaworthy; in fact as part of a test of seaworthiness he had the crew run back and forth across the deck to show one of the King’s Vice-Admirals that the boat was unsafe.  The test was stopped early because they feared the ship might capsize right there and then on the harbourside!  The Vice-Admiral had no desire to tell the King that his pet project was quite literally full of holes.  Institutional factors can prevent good decisions from being made and sometimes it is important to be prepared to re-evaluate a high profile project.  We are waiting for an announcement on the Governance Review.  When the Government’s ideas appear, we need to be ready to ask,

• Will this result in a reduction in teachers’ autonomy?
• What effect will it have on workload?
• Is there a possibility that teacher unions may be edged out in policy development?
• Will those responsible for running education have a high level of expertise and understanding? and
• Will it benefit teaching and learning?

Thirdly, it is vitally important to test new ideas carefully before rolling them out on a grand scale.  How many false starts have we experienced because no small-scale testing has been carried out?  With all the changes that have been taking place in National 5 exams, how certain can we be that they are ready to roll?  Or is there a risk that they may roll too far…?!

Fourthly, it’s ok to fail sometimes, and we need to learn from mistakes.  There needs to be an expectation that things will go wrong sometimes, but if mistakes are likely to have life-changing (or even life-ending) consequences, and perhaps be remembered for centuries, it’s probably safer to try and get it right from the get-go.  And sometimes it is better to turn back than to get lost!

So the tragedy of the Vasa teaches us:

• Listening to experts is important
• Institutional factors can prevent good decisions from being made
• Test new ideas carefully
• Learn from mistakes, try and get it right before you set off.

Getting education right for every child means you need to recruit, retain and reward the right people to be teachers.  Professional learning has to be given priority, not as an evening or weekend activity when teachers are tired and may have other responsibilities, but as part of their working week.

In 2001 we saw some very positive steps in this direction: the McCrone report, TP21, introduced a new career structure (including Chartered Teacher), improved conditions of service, restored pay, and introduced opportunities for better professional development and support, and new negotiating arrangements.   In doing so it paved the way for A Curriculum for Excellence, conceived in 2004 and implemented from 2010 onwards.  At first teachers expressed concern about the vagueness of the new curriculum, and many teachers expressed concern about the lack of clarity in terms of classroom expectations and assessment of pupils’ progress and attainment.  However, most teachers also believed that the principles underlying the new curriculum were valuable.  Who could disagree with the idea of a nation of confident learners, responsible citizens, effective contributors and successful learners?  But one of the problems with ACfE, or CfE as it later became known, was that secondary teachers had absolutely no idea of what the final assessment would look like for school leavers.

By 2011 Chartered Teacher was no longer on offer, despite the fact that it had been seen internationally as an excellent opportunity to raise teacher status, to enhance teaching and learning, and to support young people in achieving their potential.  Following a drastic and ill-considered cut to supply teachers’ pay there was a real teacher shortage making CPD more inaccessible, pension costs were increasing, the pay restoration of McCrone was effectively being undone, and support staff were being cut left, right and centre.

Exam guidance and procedures arrived late, and requests to delay starting new exams in 2013/14 were refused – unless you were at school in East Renfrewshire.  The consequence of this was that we had a workload spike, the sharp end of which has now been poking teachers hard for nearly 5 years.  The late and untested introduction of the new exams led to an ‘unintended and unsustainable workload’  for teachers and pupils.  The exam system didn’t quite capsize in harbour, but it was only because every secondary teacher in Scotland was bailing as hard as they could to keep things afloat.

GIRFEC is not the sole responsibility of classroom teachers, everybody involved in education must contribute and this includes the SQA.

One of John Swinney’s first acts as Cabinet Secretary for Education was a commitment to ‘declutter the curriculum and strip away anything that creates unnecessary workload for teachers’.  This was welcomed by teachers, but lacked the kind of bite to make workload reduction a reality in schools.  The Education Scotland Workload Review discovered that, when it came to developing policies to get workload under control, around half of employers were still dragging their heels.  Cracks were being papered over with education authorities struggling to carry out their function through lack of resources.

Austerity has pushed education authorities away from fully resourced education departments into an attitude of ‘how little can you get away with spending?’  The Pupil Equity Fund has been a welcome recognition that schools need more resources to close the attainment gap, but it has brought into sharp relief all the cuts of recent years and added workload to school leaders.  Funding calculations need to be a bit more sophisticated than the rather outdated approach of free school meal entitlement.  We don’t need a quick fix, we need to be able to make long term strategic plans for closing the attainment gap and ensuring youngsters are ready for the time of their lives.

Another quick fix, the rush job which the SQA has been committed to, in terms of removing unit assessments from National 5 and rethinking National 4, runs the risk of lacking anything like enough time for proper implementation and the institutional factor that too much is at stake to pause and reflect now.  And we hope that the new CfE benchmarks will bring some clarity, but in the short term these will add further to teachers’ workload.  Remember the old saying, haste makes waste!

So I ask the question, as teachers, are we surviving or thriving?  Do we have the time to plan, teach, assess, and evaluate, and thereby get it right for every child?  I think those who are not educators sometimes imagine that teachers are only really working when they are engaged in class contact.  The reality is that what happens in the classroom is only the tip of the iceberg.  Buoying up that visible tip is a much larger unseen structure, a mass invisible to most but which includes everything else that makes good quality learning and teaching possible: planning the experiences, preparing resources, arranging the learning environment, knowing the pupils, thinking about how to assess the outcomes, maintaining current subject knowledge, reporting on progress, evaluating the quality of the learning, and so on.  Getting it right for every child means that a standardised approach isn’t good enough, and a personalised approach takes longer.  Put another way, it’s the difference between fast food and a la carte.

A few months ago I heard some new ways of describing ways to get teachers to work for free: you can now include ‘added discretional value,’ ‘discretionary energy,’ and ‘functional flexibility’ on your buzzword bingo list.  Teachers go way beyond their contractual obligations to nurture youngsters and give their time freely to close the attainment gap but little of this work is truly recognised as ‘part of the job’.  How many of us here recently led Easter schools, offered supported study before and after school and at lunchtime, mentored pupils at risk of underachievement, offered before and after school clubs, led and participated in evening events such as discos, concerts and shows, organised and supervised extracurricular trips, engaged in more marking and preparation than time allowed, prepared for inspections, carried out all the development work to enable us to teach, and met with colleagues in our own time?  And how many of us talk of just surviving through to the end of term…?

Despite the stress and work pressure, teachers have the lowest absence rates of any local authority employees and yet how many of us find ourselves subject to draconian absence management policies? How many of us have been refused things like compassionate leave and time for moving house, weddings and funerals? In what way are teachers nurtured?  Developing the young workforce is a key government strategy, but are teachers’ employers setting a good example?

As teachers we want to do a good job, we want our pupils to succeed, we want to be happy where we work with minimal stress.  We want to close the attainment gap, we want to give everyone the best start in life.  The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, reporting on international samples of 15 year olds’ performance in Maths, Science and reading every three years, was published in November.  In the PISA report 2015 Scotland’s performance had slipped, and this was seen as a big concern by some politicians who only looked at the unhelpful country rankings.  Now, it has been suggested that the PISA tower is leaning – there have been criticisms of its tests, criticism of how pupils to be tested are chosen in some countries, and criticisms of its use of statistical techniques to create country rankings.  Any educator will tell you that an over-reliance on standard tests narrows learning down to what can easily be measured.    But one of the unsung successes of the PISA report, and I think one which must surely be above criticism, was the way it highlighted the very positive and supportive relationships teachers in Scotland have with learners.

Politicians are fond of OECD statistics.  One of the reasons we are about to experience big data collection in the form of standardised assessment is the OECD Scotland report.  But let me quote from the OECD’s 2014 Education at a Glance Indicators:

“A teacher of general subjects in upper secondary education has an average teaching load of 655 hours per year. Teaching time exceeds 800 hours in only six countries: Argentina, Australia, Chile, Mexico, the United States, and Scotland.”

When it comes to teaching time, at fifth-highest we are a world leader!  Not something to be proud of.

If the Cabinet Secretary for Education is serious about improving education, he needs to give teachers time to teach so that we can keep putting pupils first.  This is not about lengthy statements from Education Scotland or long improvement documents, it is about reducing the amount of teacher class-contact time to allow teachers to carry out the vital tasks that keep afloat the success of that learning time for every child.  The constant outflow of words from Education Scotland needs to be stiffly translated into time to enable every educator to work smartly, effectively and rightly for every child.  Teachers are looking for assistance, not advice.

Where in the past the dominie ruled the classroom with a belt and a stare, we have come to the realisation that it takes a whole village to educate a child.  This ‘Team Around the Child’ extends far beyond the school into the homes of the youngsters we teach, into health, into social services, into colleges, universities and employers.  Giving the team direction takes time and well trained leadership.  For example, the challenge of engaging parents is not new, but if we are to begin to ensure that they are able to have access to high quality clear information and time to understand issues then those who are paid members of the team also need time.  Building strong working relationships which enable valued family engagement is at the root of successful learning.  We need time to work with all the other people who want children to be successful learners.

Kai-Ming Cheng is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Hong Kong, and can be considered an expert.  He says, “When teachers are surviving, they are not focused on student learning” – in other words teachers need an achievable workload.  I know a number of teachers who have reduced their paid hours to part-time to enable them to do a full-time job.  There is evidence that many over-burdened teachers are struggling to maintain good mental health.  Our currently-running industrial action has focused on taking control of workload by empowering teachers to say no.  Workload is strangling innovation!  To thrive, what we really need is the time to say ‘yes!’  We want collaborative classrooms, collaborative staffrooms, collaborative schools and collaborative communities.  We want to say yes to innovation, yes to getting it right for every child, yes to parental engagement, yes to personal development, yes to developing the young workforce, yes to bold new methods of assessment.  We want to thrive, give us the time!

In their book ‘Flip the System,’ which I strongly recommend, Jelmer Evers and Rene Kneyber conclude that teachers need time to collaborate , build trust, assess their peers, innovate and construct a new language of education.’  In 2015 the OECD found that ‘Research… suggests that there are positive associations between both self-efficacy and job satisfaction and student achievement’.  In other words, the more fulfilled teachers are by their achievement and the more opportunities they have to collaborate, the better the quality of youngsters’ learning experiences.  Teachers feed on their pupils’ success!  But if they are constantly overburdened with tasks they know they will struggle to complete, teachers experience stress which inevitably transmits to the learners they are working with.  Remember, teachers’ working conditions are youngsters’ learning conditions!   Acknowledging the professionalism of teachers means that there needs to be adequate time to prepare, reflect and collaborate, and Evers and Kneyber suggest that, ‘spending more than 19 hours in front of a class per week seriously hampers the capacity to place teachers in the lead’. We want to teach, and we want the time to do it!

Finally, we need to offer good opportunities for leadership.  Getting it right for every child requires time and the effective use of that most precious resource, time, requires good leadership.  Effective, nurturing, leadership must be about good pruning and weeding to allow a few central ideas to blossom rather than allowing a thousand ideas to bloom.  Sometimes it feels like there are rather too many great ideas in education to really comprehend them all.  And rather than handing young people cut flowers, as teachers we are just really trying to teach them to cultivate their own plants.

The ADES Charter 2016 states:  "There is a growing challenge across Scotland in the recruitment of high quality teachers and headteachers. ADES sees this as one of the most immediate challenges facing Scottish education where teacher shortages and declining numbers of applicants for headteacher posts pose a major risk to the system.”  Ignoring the opportunity to develop the professionalism envisaged by McCrone in 2001, education authorities throughout Scotland have been stripping out Principal Teacher Curriculum, Depute Head, and even Headteacher posts in primary and secondary schools to save money, removing important planks of leadership and weakening the middle.  You can’t steer a ship without someone at the helm!

It is surely no coincidence that as opportunities for career progression have dwindled recruitment and retention have become more difficult.  There is plenty of evidence that almost all graduates are attracted by opportunities for career progression.  If teaching is perceived as offering only limited progression, or progression only for an elite few, then graduates will look elsewhere.  All teachers in every sector require a remarkable skillset and wide-ranging expertise to enable youngsters to succeed.  Although teaching might have been regarded as a lifelong career in the past, current teachers are now realising that their skills and expertise are transferable into other careers.  According to the recent teacher census there are about 730 unfilled teaching vacancies in Scotland.  The GTCS is investigating the loss from the registered teaching workforce of 861 teachers age 21-40.  This seems to be taking some education employers by surprise, and it seems hard to believe that offering headteachers more control will improve the situation. Pay and promotion opportunities are simply not keeping up.  In the battle for hearts and minds, Scotland’s teachers are warriors for learning.  Warriors need leaders.  Scotland’s future deserves a profession which will fight for them!

The flatter promotion structure which has drifted into place means that far fewer opportunities exist for skilled people to achieve promotion, and the steps to promotion are comparatively much larger now.  A few talented individuals may rise to the top helium-style, but for many other excellent practitioners the wind is taken out of their sails through lack of opportunity.  Where promotion turnover once refreshed and aerated schools, teachers move far less frequently.   Many teachers view senior leadership roles as having become over-demanding and at odds with work/life balance.

The SSTA is seeking to start the debate on how a few more rungs on the promotion ladder can be reintroduced, with the benefit that workload and leadership expertise will be more equitably shared and rewarded.  This is not about rewarding some teachers for narrow subject-specific knowledge.  It is about recruiting and retaining the right people and it is about getting the right spread of opportunities for properly paid, appropriately skilled and expertly knowledgeable leadership in place.  Then we can start making real progress on closing the attainment gap and developing a curriculum fit for Scotland’s future.

A jaded profession cannot sparkle.  The ship is wobbling.  If Scottish education is to retain its sheen it needs more than a bit of spit and polish, it’s time to enhance what we do.  We don’t need more rules and governance by top-heavy big guns.  Having asked the experts, teachers, what would make things work the way they should, it’s time for politicians to start listening.  We have had plenty of change in recent years, and what we really need now is time for reflection, time for consolidation, time to teach, time to lead, and the resources to do it well.

The SSTA continues to be the seasoned salt of Scottish education, playing a vital role in uniquely representing teachers in Scottish Secondary schools.  In 2019 we are looking forward to celebrating 75 years since the Association’s founding.  I am proud to say that, since this time last year, I have discovered that my grandfather, Alfred Duncan, was one of the early protagonists of the Association.  He was a teacher of Commerce first at Hillhead High then at Jordanhill College and was elected to be Glasgow Regional Secretary in 1945.   In the Merchants’ Hall, Edinburgh, on Saturday 24 November 1945 136 members attended a Special Meeting of Congress.  At that meeting my grandfather, as Glasgow Regional Secretary, opened the debate on whether the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association should secede from the EIS, that is, to become a Union in its own right and the rest is history.  My other grandpa Laurie was a member of the EIS all his life, but like the EIS and the SSTA today, Laurie and Alf got on pretty well most of the time!

I believe that the work of the Association is just as relevant and important now as it was when my grandfather spoke on behalf of Glasgow members in 1945.  One of the attractions of the SSTA to me has always been its nimbleness; we have a very focused approach and listen to our members carefully.  By focusing only on Secondary education we are able to support members by knowing each other well and by understanding the things which sometimes make our work difficult.   In my view no other association or group in Scotland gives secondary teachers a voice as effectively as the SSTA.

The people here in this room, the SSTA at large, we represent the activists who are working tirelessly to support our colleagues through casework and campaigns.  We are the ones organising and standing up for the rights of teachers and learners.  Our work has to be recognised and appreciated by employers, politicians, parents and young people.  When we go back to school next week, let’s take our shiny badges and wear them prominently with pride.  Make my grandpa the SSTA protagonist Alf Duncan proud, tell people, I am a member of the SSTA, I am an innovator, in my teaching I want to get it right for every child, I stand up for students and teachers in secondary education!  Give me the time!

For further information, please contact

Euan Duncan
President

Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association
West End House
14 West End Place
Edinburgh
EH11 2ED

The Association awarded Past President's Alan McKenzie and Margaret Smith with their Life Membership scroll at this years Annual Congress at Crieff Hydro, Friday 20th May 2016.  Video of their testimonials and acceptance speeches can be viewed below.

The Association held it's 71st Annual Congress on Friday 8 May and Saturday 9 May 2015 at Crieff Hydro.

This page will be updated  with links to Reports and with video recordings of speeches and motions as they become available online.

Reports

General Secretary Congress report 2015

Superannuation

Report of the UK Teachers’ Superannuation Working Party – Fiona Dalziel

Motions:

A list of the motions from Congress 2015 are available to view at this page.

Seamus Searson delivered the Report of the General Secretary at the SSTA Annual Congress on Friday 8 May 2015.