THE IRISH NATIONAL TEACHERS ORGANISATION ANNUAL NORTHERN CONFERENCE 2014 Resolutions Passed / Remitted
1. Conference: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) Acknowledges the end of the freeze on public servants pay enacted by the NI Executive and calls on the Executive to move immediately to further disassociate itself from the failed austerity agenda of the Tory led government in London. Condemns the paltry 1% pay lift awarded to teachers in the current year as inadequate when judged against the continued rises in the cost of living and the increases in pension contributions demanded of teachers. Demands the NI Executive make available to the Department of Education the funds necessary to award teachers a pay rise that restores salaries to the values that existed before the financial crash Demands the NI Executive increase and ring fence educational funding to ensure no further erosion of frontline services, administrative support and resource spending Urges the NI Executive to reach an agreement on a unified administrative architecture for the management of education across the North as a matter of urgency Instructs the Northern Committee to initiate a programme of industrial action up to and including strike action in the event that the NI Executive and the Department of Education continue to facilitate a decline in teachers living standards and an erosion of their terms and conditions. 2. Conference notes with concern the ever increasing workload of teachers. Conference also notes with concern that the Workload Agreement is not being uniformly applied across schools. Conference calls on Northern Committee: (iii) To produce guidelines for school representatives in particular and members in general, in order that they may use the Workload Agreement to protect members against excessive demands from School Management, Employing Authorities and Boards of Governors. To formulate a plan of industrial action, similar to the Enough is Enough campaign, which ring fences the Workload Agreement and protects members from management side non-compliance with the Workload Agreement. To investigate all claims of abuse of the Workload Agreement and where appropriate, ballot members within individual schools for industrial action, up to and including strike action. 1
3. Conference: Notes with dismay the continued lack of progress in the establishment of a single employing authority for teachers. Notes with concern the lack of professional development opportunities for teachers due to the downsizing of the Education and Library Boards. Conference calls on the Northern Committee: (iii) To lobby the Education Minister to make a final decision on ESA. To petition the Department of Education to ensure that all resources proposed to be provided by ESA are now available through the current statutory bodies. To work to ensure that all teaching staff are given the opportunity to develop professionally and that the ELBs are repopulated to allow said professional development to take place in the event that ESA fails to come into being. 4. Conference notes with concern the lack of forward thinking and planning related to Area Planning where schools face amalgamation or closure, particularly where teachers have been made redundant prior to schools being amalgamated. Conference also notes with concern that teachers have been made compulsor ily redundant in some schools earmarked for closure under Area Planning and which subsequently have been kept open as a result of consultations and changes in circumstance. Conference calls on Northern Committee to demand that DENI put an end to compulsory redundancy in schools which have been earmarked for amalgamation or closure with immediate effect. 5. Conference: Congratulates the Minister for Education for not slavishly following the lead of the Secretary of State for Education in England and Wales in relation to the review of GCSE and A-Level examinations; Welcomes the Report by CCEA, which recommends that GCSEs and A- Levels are retained here, with some modification to reflect the curriculum in Northern Ireland. Conference: Calls on the Education Minister to accept the CCEA recommendation and to resist any demands to follow the path of the Secretary of State for Education in England and Wales. Calls upon Northern Committee to work with the Northern Ireland Teachers Council to ensure that changes to these examinations remain pupil focused, are portable across these islands and beyond and continue to be credible. 2
6. Northern Conference congratulates those post-primary schools who have moved away from academic selection as an admission criteria. Conference calls on Northern Committee: To reactivate its anti-academic selection campaign and use every means possible to get the message across to the public and policy makers that academic selection at eleven is a major impediment to raising education standards in NI. To put the removal of any forms of academic selection as criteria for admission to post-primary schools back at the top of its agenda and campaign accordingly. 7. Conference: Congratulates members on their steadfast boycott of the new arrangements for end-of-key-stage assessment of cross-curricular skills. Commends the Minister of Education for listening to and acting upon some of the concerns of our members in relation to the new assessment arrangements; Conference: Instructs Northern Committee to continue to seek agreement on a set of assessment arrangements that are manageable and fit for purpose. Calls upon the minister to ensure that his department and CCEA continue to engage positively with INTO to ensure that the new arrangements are further modified to become more manageable and fit for purpose. 8. Conference deplores the meagre provision for maternity leave for teachers in Northern Ireland. It clearly falls short of the provision provided for other public sector workers. Conference instructs Northern Committee to engage with our partners in the Northern Ireland Teachers' Council to develop a claim on Maternity, Paternity & Adoption Pay on leave which better supports teachers and which is in line with the best public sector schemes. 9. Conference welcomes the publication by the Education Minister of the DE strategy on the way forward for early years education. Conference notes with concern the potential negative impact on nursery schools of the removal of two year olds and calls on Northern Committee to monitor closely the implementation of the new strategy. 3
Conference further calls on Northern Committee to continue its campaign to have all state-funded provision in the pre-school year delivered by qualified teachers. 10. Conference: Notes the commitment and leadership shown by the INTO in representing teachers in the Irish-Medium Education sector. Appreciates the distinct nature of this sector and understands the differing demands that may be placed on teachers in Irish-Medium schools. Conference: Instructs Northern Committee to explore the possibility of platforms in which Irish-Medium Education teachers may represent issues as a distinct body within the INTO. Instructs Northern Committee to ensure the publication of future bulletins from INTO and other correspondence pertaining to teachers for display in staff-rooms, is in Irish. 11. Northern Conference congratulates those schools involved in the Shared Education programme and the huge strides they have taken towards a shared future within our communities.. Conference calls on the Minister to engage more proactively by providing concrete support for local schools and communities to take this programme of work to the next stage. 12. Conference notes the media led drive to have web access to classrooms in Northern Ireland. Conference calls on Northern Committee to strongly defend members from this ill-conceived and dangerous policy. Conference further calls for a media drive to highlight to the wider public the in herent problems in allowing web access to classrooms. 13. Conference notes with concern the number of teaching principals who feel unable to avail of the two-day principal release due to budgeting constraints. Conference calls on Northern Committee to work to ensure that a separate fund is established to allow sufficient funding for the Principal Release Scheme outside the schools LMS Budget. 4
14. Conference notes the difficulties for teachers and the hardship for pupils who are the most vulnerable members of the school-age population caused by the unwarranted delay of area planning for special schools. Conference calls upon the Department of Education together with the relevant management bodies to accelerate the process of area planning in relation to schools with children with special educational needs. 15. Conference: (iii) Commends the hard work, support & successes of the INTO in defending and supporting teachers subjected to bullying and harassment in schools. Notes with concern the unendurable working conditions for some teachers and the impact on their own physical and mental well-being. Calls on Northern Committee to work with employers and external support agencies to ensure responsive and efficient structured procedures are put in place for all, with the reassurances that they are easily accessible and effective. 16. Conference: Calls on Northern Committee to establish a subcommittee including retired members to investigate how retired members could continue to contribute to the organisation without breach of rule.the remit of the subcommittee would be to make recommendations regarding: Category of membership Subscriptions Entitlements Authorises Northern Committee to consider the proposals brought forward by the subcommittee and act on them. 17. Conference: Condemns the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) for its failure to publish a sexual orientation strategy by the end of 2013 in spite of repeated commitments to do so. Instructs Northern Committee to work with the NITC to call on the Department of Education for immediate sexual orientation awareness training for all GTCNI registered teachers to ensure that teachers feel more confident and comfortable in talking about sexual orientation issues and responding to homophobic incidents. 5
(iii) Instructs Northern Committee to conduct research on the experiences of LGBT INTO members within schools. 18. Conference notes with concern the increasing amount of teaching time spent dealing with disciplinary issues. Conference calls on Northern Committee to conduct a survey to ascertain the true extent of the problem. Conference also calls on Northern Committee to publicise the findings of the survey and to lobby DE for additional resources to deal with the issue. 19. Conference notes the difficulties in accessing the availability of substitute teachers through the NISTR system. Conference calls on Northern Committee to lobby the DE to ensure that NISTR is fit for purpose. 20. Conference notes with concern the attempts by the DEL Minister, to rationalise the infrastructure for teacher education provision in Northern Ireland, without the involvement of the Department of Education. Conference calls on Northern Committee to resist the attempts to close or merge the teacher education colleges here. 21. Conference notes that the practice adopted by NISTR when dealing with an abuse allegation against a teacher is to automatically suspend the teacher from the live register. This renders the teacher incapable of securing any other work and the suspension is effected without pay. This is unacceptable to Conference. Conference calls on Northern Committee to engage with DE to develop an agreed protocol which supports all teachers when they are faced with suspension following an allegation of abuse. 22. Conference: Welcomes the Department of Education s review of the Common Funding Scheme and their attempt to make more funding available to those schools with high numbers of pupils from areas of high social deprivation. Deplores the timing of consultation, distributed to schools on 28 June 2013, and the absence of any impact assessment during the consultation period. 6
Conference instructs Northern Committee to work with the NITC to continue to lobby the Department of Education to desist from proposing the removal of funding from schools. 23. Conference calls on Northern Committee to demand that the Department of Education introduce a value added measurement so that the true performance of a school can be ascertained. 24. Conference condemns the ongoing austerity agenda driven by Westminster and administered by the Northern Ireland Executive, including the assault on public sector workers jobs, pay, conditions and pensions. Conference condemns the failure of the leadership of the wider trade union movement to build a campaign of industrial action to challenge this agenda. Conference calls on Northern Committee to identify other trade unions in the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions who are willing to call for a general strike and having done so to build a campaign to bring this about through the TUC and ICTU. 25. Conference calls on Northern Committee to examine the possibilities of a continued role for retired members (within the parameters of Rule 76c) to take full advantage of their expertise. 26. Conference notes with concern the continued suspension of industrial action taken and the apparent lack of an end date to a talks process which was entered into in the summer of 2012 and which continues to this date. Conference also notes with concern and is dismayed at the tactic of entering into talks with Management Side with no timeframe for either the completion of talks or a return to industrial action should talks fail. Conference is dismayed by the lack of progress on the key issue of pensions and on other strands of the talks such as the role of the ETI. Conference calls on Northern Committee to: Review the talks process with immediate effect and to report to the membership the gains and failures of the talks and the status of the suspended industrial action by September 2014. Subsequently reinstate the Enough is Enough campaign. 7
MOTIONS REMITTED TO NORTHERN COMMITTEE: R1. Conference condemns the changes to the Teachers Pension Scheme which will lead to a delay in teachers being able to access their pension in line with changes to the state pension age while paying substantially more in pension contributions. Conference notes with concern the lack of a meaningful campaign by the ICTU, NITC and INTO to challenge and bring down the Public Service Pensions Bill. Conference calls on the Northern Committee to ballot members for a campaign of action on pensions, up to and including strike action. R2. Conference notes with concern the ever increasing demands being placed within the workload of the teaching principals and their subsequent health and well-being. Conference calls on Northern Committee to conduct a survey to assess the level of principals who are not availing of their allocated principal release time in order to maintain staff levels and remain on budget. 8