A group of NUT members were telling me about their workload. One teacher explained, "I don’t know what it is like in other schools, but we are all in school at seven. We don’t really get a break. We stay until five and then after supper we have at least two more hours to do. Plus I work all day on Sunday. Sunday is like a working day for me."

Two teachers started speaking at once. The younger teacher gave way so the older teacher could explain what the Head’s demands on planning and marking were. When she had finished I asked the younger teacher what she had wanted to say. She looked around sheepishly and said, "I only wanted to say that I work Saturday mornings as well."

It became clear that the teachers at this school were divided into two groups. On the one hand you had the younger teachers who could not see how they could continue to balance their commitment to their work and their commitments at home and were trying to find out whether they should just leave that particular school or leave the profession as a whole. The Union has to expose how excessive hours are driving these new recruits from the profession, as just one reason why workload must be reduced.

But there was another group of teachers at the school I visited and they form a significant part of our union’s membership. They are older teachers who are not at all confident they could

get a job elsewhere and who are worried that they may succumb to stress related illness which forces them to retire early. Of course, I know that the news for teachers in this position is not good. Headteachers are being urged to do more to drive teachers with sickness problems out of the profession. More and more teachers who leave the profession due to ill health are finding that they do not qualify for a sickness pension. More and more teachers are being tossed on the scrap heap while their colleagues look on and wonder if they will be next.

What is our union doing about it? Quite rightly the union has refused to sign up to the remodelling agreement, which contains no commitment to reduce teachers’ hours. This agreement is simply an attempt to get more children minded by assistants who are not trained or paid to teach and disguise this cost cutting exercise as a move to reduce teachers’ workload. But so far all the union is doing is disagreeing with remodelling. It is not actually opposing remodelling. As it is schools are already planning on the assumption that remodelling is going to happen.

Our members are desperate for protection and desperate for action on workload. It is the job of the union to organise members to act together for their own protection. What else is a union for?

We should announce that we will ballot our members for strike action in any school where duties properly carried out by a trained teacher are done by somebody who is not a trained teacher. This will have the effect of delaying the introduction of the worst aspect of remodelling for both teachers and pupils. And we should seek parental support for this action, because parents will want their children to be taught by properly trained teachers.

The union should seize the initiative. We should not allow the debate to be shaped by the remodelling agreement the government has reached with the other unions. In primary schools we should stop handing in short-term planning, a pointless exercise of no benefit to our pupils. In secondary schools we should go beyond ‘banking agreements’ where they exist and implement the decision made at last year’s conference to refuse to cover beyond the first day. There is no doubt that teachers in secondary schools would support a refusal to cover action with enthusiasm. The time to take action on workload and to stop remodelling is now. Further delay will mean it is just too late.

A PROGRAM OF ACTION

The existing workload action does not protect members from the tasks that contribute most heavily to the excessive workload burden, such as excessive planning and assessment demands . If the Government is refusing to set a limit on our hours, then Union action must be extended so that we can set a limit ourselves. This should include:

• A union veto over new demands on teacher working time.
• Not preparing work to allow unqualified staff to take classes.
• Refusal to cover for absent colleagues beyond the first day of absence. If appropriate cover isn’t available, classes should be sent home or supervised by school management, not support staff.
• Refusal to submit short/medium term planning to school management.
• A union limit to the amount of assessment and marking that has to be completed each week.

• Support requests for strike ballots in schools where unqualified staff are being used to teach classes.
• Build for a one-day national strike.