As many members will know, Pauline
Town recently retired as Secretary of Leicestershire NUT. Pauline has served as
Secretary ever since Local Government reorganisation back in the mid-1990s,
when education was separated into the City of Leicester and Leicestershire. NUT
organisation mirrored these changes, and Pauline became our Secretary, after
acting as Leicestershire Divisional Secretary from 1993. Before then, of
course, she had acted as Secretary for Melton NUT Association, and had also
occupied a number of other offices, while also teaching at Queniborough Primary School.
This level of commitment is
not easy to sustain, and it’s even less easy to sustain it for so long while
providing the exceptionally high level of commitment towards representing
members as Pauline has done. So, when Pauline retired there were many heartfelt
and sincere tributes in recognition of this service.
- Nationally, the NUT recognised this by awarding
Pauline a certificate in recognition of her unstinting efforts at
representing Leicestershire members and furthering the interests of the
NUT.
- Regionally, Pauline’s long and tireless activity
was recognised by the Regional NUT Executive and Council, where Pauline
has represented Leicestershire NUT for many years.
- Locally, her service was recognised by her fellow
County Secretaries in other teacher
unions, and by senior officers within the Local Authority. She has ‘locked
horns’ with these on many, many occasions, but all have recognised the
wisdom of her principled stands on a variety of issues. Indeed, one of her
fellow County Secretaries commented that if you cut Pauline in
half, you’d find ‘NUT’ running through her like a stick of Blackpool rock!
- Her colleagues within the NUT in Leicestershire
have honoured her with a range of gifts and a celebratory meal, and no-one
within Leicestershire NUT has anything less than the highest regard for
her services and commitment. She has lived and breathed NUT for all her
working life, and countless hundreds (if not thousands) of members have
benefited from her work on their behalf, either in terms of individual
casework or by advocating NUT policies in too many meetings and
negotiations to count. The name of Pauline Town will be a byword for
effort, commitment and advocacy of NUT policies for a long time to come
And, to use a favourite word
of the late Steve Sinnott, she has done all of this
while remaining a ‘smashing’ person and a good friend to those who have known
her and benefitted from her advice and wise counsel.
Of course, ‘retirement’
suggests cats, slippers and relaxation. This is not what ‘retirement’ means to
Pauline. She will still attend Committee and General NUT meetings, she will
still represent NUT members in Rutland
and on the continuing saga of the Melton Review, and more importantly she will
still be on the end of a telephone for me! Modern management speak would
describe this as providing a ‘steer’; I call it being a friend, and I am
honoured to be able to call Pauline my friend.
An impossible act to follow,
really. If I can do the job half as well as Pauline, then Leicestershire NUT
will be OK. I will try to do Pauline, and other NUT members, proud in the new
job.
OUR NEW SECRETARY
INTRODUCES HIMSELF
My own background is that I
have taught in Leicestershire for more than twenty years, and been active in
the NUT almost from the start of my teaching career. I have been
- A school Rep for longer than I care to admit to
myself
- President and Secretary of the old Coalville and District Association
- A delegate to Annual Conference
- Assistant Secretary and President of
Leicestershire NUT
- A delegate to various negotiating bodies at
County Hall
- A casework officer
- A dad (still am)
- A life-long and long-suffering Sheffield
Wednesday fan (still am)
My priorities for the new
job are pretty much what you would expect. I think that Leicestershire teachers
will face enormous challenges in the coming years, and I will do my best to
defend and further their interests and those of the NUT.
- The NUT campaign for higher pay will continue
until we secure a reasonable pay increase for teachers. It is outrageous
that the Government continues to blame public sector workers for inflation
when we are the victims! It is a scandal that the Government’s strategy
for dealing with the issue of teacher recruitment and morale is to insist
on pay cuts, while the cost of living rises on a daily basis. I think all
NUT members should be asking teachers in other teacher unions why their
leaders appear to be in favour of cutting pay rather than joining a
campaign to secure pay increases.
- Workload will continue to be an issue attracting
debate and complaint in staffrooms, and the NUT is leading the campaign to
secure a realistic work-life balance. Teachers still attend too many
meetings, still work too many hours at home, still do tasks unrelated to
teaching and learning, still do cover, and often have to fight for
legitimate PPA time. These issues will be a main priority for the NUT in
the coming months.
- The campaign against Burleigh Community College trying to become
a Trust/Foundation school is the first move in what will become an
increasingly bitter struggle as other schools seek to become
Trust/Foundation schools. The NUT is opposed to these moves for many
reasons, not least because small groups of people are gaining control of
public resources and assets running into millions of pounds. There is
nothing that cannot be achieved by governors and senior school managers by
working within current structures, which guarantee democratic
accountability of schools through Local Authority control. These
initiatives, which will undoubtedly see national pay and conditions
threatened in the long term, are part of a concerted attempt to disrupt
local authority powers and develop the power of private industry in
education. There is precious little research to show that changing
educational structures improves educational standards, which is what
teaching and learning should be about. The NUT is opposed to educational
‘Trusts’, and favours ‘A Good Local School
For Every Child and For Every Community’. I hope Leicestershire NUT
can oppose Trusts to the same extent that the City Association has been in
the vanguard of opposition to Academies in Leicester.
Those fighting Trust status for Burleigh should
be applauded.
- The existence of teacher redundancies is
something which we need to face head on. Too many schools have sacked
teachers with little publicity, either among parents or teachers in other
schools. We have become used to this as one of life’s ‘realities’! Where
are the calls for naming and shaming schools which sack teachers? Why is
naming and shaming good for results, league tables and ‘failing’ schools
(remember the recent farce over this list), but not good for schools which
sack teachers? Let’s have league tables for how many teachers have been
sacked in individual schools and Local Authorities! Leicestershire NUT
will robustly defend its members facing this situation, and schools should
be under no illusions about being able to ‘quietly’ sack NUT members
without opposition.
- I also want to provide continued support to our
network of NUT Reps. They are an invaluable part of the NUT, and deserve
the best possible service. This means providing support and training, but
it also means trying to meet as many Reps as possible at school meetings
and putting faces to the names on mailing labels. I am determined to
develop as many ways as possible for Reps and members to contact
Leicestershire NUT, and we hope to have introduced an online form for this
purpose (at www.leicsnut.org) by the time you read this.
These are busy
and challenging times for all of us. Teaching children is one of the most
important jobs there is. We change lives every single day. Education can
liberate children from the past and open doors that have remained closed for
generations. All teachers should be proud of what they do, even in those
moments when frustration threatens to engulf us and challenge the very reasons
why we do this job. We deal with the consequences of poverty and social
exclusion all the time. We see how these evils eat away at children’s lives and
aspirations, strangling the hopes and dreams of a better life. And we try to do
something about it. That is why what we do matters. That is why teachers
matter, and that is why I am proud to work for the NUT in order to defend and
promote the interests of Leicestershire teachers.
Andy Reeve
Secretary, Leicestershire
NUT.
