Interesting Times

Kevin opened his General Secretary's report to this month's Executive by noting that we live in interesting times with two cabinet resignations and a likely Labour victory if an election were called tomorrow.

The National Education Union is in a good position to take advantage of the opportunities this presents, with significant membership growth in recent months. This year's recruitment figures are 2.6x the size of last year. This gives us greater strength and more authority to speak on behalf of all teachers.

Ofsted, Secondary Assessment and Children's Mental Health

This morning's Education and Equalities Committee began with a discussion of children's mental health. In response to the DfE proposals on mental health 'first aid' training in schools, the NUT has used 'In Conversation' to discuss this with secondary school teachers. 88% of teachers surveyed thought that the number of students with complex mental health problems was increasing , whilst 67% didn't feel the pastoral support for students was sufficient.

A number of teachers reported positive approaches in their school towards addressing children's mental health and the committee agreed to seek to publicise some of these, whilst not ignoring the causes of increasing mental health problems amongst children and the inadequacy of funding for specialist services to address this.

Campaigning for Professional Unity

I am pleased to have been re-elected as an Officer of Unify - the campaign for one education union - at their AGM in the ATL offices in London today.

Unify was founded in 1997 as Professional Unity 2000, in the hope that professional unity would be achieved within three years. It has taken a little longer than that but now, twenty years later, we are making real strides towards bringing together education professionals. Throughout that time, Unify has been at the forefront of campaigning for professional unity and that campaign continues today.

For more information about Unify and to join or affiliate your union branch, you can contact me on g.little@executive.nut.org.uk.