NUT Conference 2014 - An Exciting Year Ahead!

This year's conference was in sunny Brighton, and 1,200 delegates met to decide on the union's policies for the year ahead.

Sunny Brighton on Saturday Morning

Less Sunny Brighton on Sunday afternoon

The conference discussed a wide range of issues, but included votes to promote the rights and visibility of LGBT members, support our Black members to achieve equality, support for disabled people and SEN students in the face of continued attacks on their living conditions by the current government, to continue our support for the Palestinian people, to fight for the repeal of the trades union gagging bill and in education to fight for the place of play in the early years curriculum and build for a single education union.

Our delegates took an active part in the debates, as you can see!

Division Secretary Sue Arguile speaking. Below,Vice Preisdent, Nicola Scope.

One of the most important issue this conference was our ongoing dispute with the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove. Conference reaffirmed the need to continue and escalate this dispute, with several key actions agreed upon:

• Continue to build support for our action with parents through stalls and other public activities like the Education Question Times being held throughout the country.
• Put pressure on the government through a mass lobby of MPs on 21st of June. The aim is to get thousands of teachers across the country to head to Westminster en mass and keep our dispute at the top of the political agenda.
• Continue with national strike action this summer and into the autumn unless Gove agrees to serious negotiations.

As Division Secretary Sue Arguile made clear in an interview with Radio Derby on Tuesday morning (if you click on the link, the interview was just before 8.00), although our dispute necessarily includes complaints about our pay, pensions, working conditions and workload, we are doing this not just for ourselves but to ensure that education in Britain has a future.

Gove has allowed state-funded free schools to flourish, many of which have ended in disaster but all of which have drained funds from other schools in their areas and in the worst cases resulted in closure which has left students without a school to attend in the middle of the school year. He has allowed free schools to employ unqualified teachers and if he is not checked will probably want to roll this ridiculous idea out across the state sector. His  madcap drive for academisation and free schools have wrought chaos in many areas as schools are opened where there is no shortage of places and planning by local authorities to ensure that every child has a school place is rendered useless. His changes to the curriculum mark out many children as failures before they even attend primary school fully and will not equip students for the future when they do leave school, and funding which is badly needed for education provision is instead siphoned off to private companies providing services at a profit! The fight to defeat Gove is as important as ever, and when conference passed the priority motion to continue the dispute together with the NASUWT if possible but alone if necessary, there was a standing ovation and loud, confident chants from delegates: Gove must go!

As well as the debates, there were a number of fringe meetings on a range of important topics - here are a few that our delegates attended!

Our own Nicola Scope sits on a panel at a fringe meeting on organising in academies!

General Secretary Christine Blower addresses a fringe meeting of the Anti-Academies Alliance.

A panel including Owen Jones, author of Chavs: The demonisation of the working class, and Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, discuss the teaching of World War One in schools.

This banner was displayed at a Unite Against Fascism meeting to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the death of anti-racist campaigner and NUT member Blair Peach at the hands of police officers during a demonstration against the fascist National Front in 1979.