Voice: General secretary's speech to the annual conference of Voice: the union for education professionals

Wednesday, 30, Jul 2008 12:00

Philip Parkin, General Secretary's speech to Voice Annula Conference 2008.

Biographical details and a photograph are available on request, or can be downloaded from http://www.voicetheunion.org.uk/parkin.

Philip Parkin: philipparkin@voicetheunion.org.uk

Further details of Conference are online at http://www.voicetheunion.org.uk/conference2008

Quotes from the speech:

“After the debacle of this year’s marking processes, which suggests, apart from anything else, that the whole exercise is too big, too expensive, too difficult to control, too inaccurate and so pointless that the opportunity should be taken to rapidly re-evaluate the whole programme and scrap it, I’m sure that the money saved could be far better used to finance some of the government’s personalization and intervention agendas.”

“Many people are questioning the value of KS3 testing and there is now increasing evidence that the results of KS2 testing are not providing the information which secondary schools want or trust. Some would argue that the case for public accountability and testing is incontrovertible. That may be the case, but the current format of industrial testing is not the way to do it.”

“DCSF is significantly different in focus compared to its predecessor – a much wider agenda in which education sits within a context of children and their families. So here is a new vision articulated by government and put into practice in the creation of the DCSF.

“The concept of an overarching Department that looks after the whole child is something with which we would have great sympathy. But I do see a danger in this. Whilst this may be a change to be applauded, there has to be certainty that education does not lose its sharp focus in the context of that wider agenda.”

“We have warned for a number of years that initiatives were being introduced in too great a quantity, too quickly.

“We get reports from our members that that they are implementing changes for which the groundwork of preparation, training and detail is inadequate. The introduction of the new Diplomas is a case in point. Members tell us that they feel under-prepared, under-trained and with too little time to introduce the Diplomas as they would wish.

“I have to ask the government: ‘Do you want to do it, or do you want to do it well?’

“I understand that the government has a desire to effect change and to move with some speed. But it has to balance this against the time required for successful implementation and the workload it imposes upon staff.”

“Schools are being required to take on more and more of the responsibilities that rightly belong to parents; and to provide more of the stability in children’s lives which should be provided by families. There also a perception that, in general, the skills of parents are declining as one generation succeeds another. And this is where the blurring of the boundaries between education and a social service occurs.

“If successive generations of parents become less skilled at the job then what is learnt becomes increasingly diluted as time goes by.

“My impression is that recent DCSF work on the parent agenda has concentrated more on the rights of parents than their responsibilities.

“It worries me that the more you do for people the less responsibility they will take for themselves – that the transfer of responsibility becomes complete and the expectations upon parents reduce.

“I feel very uncomfortable about the direction in which our society is going.

“A major element in the lives of many children is the absence of a functioning parental figure. …Emotional deprivation is a lethal weapon.

“We may find pupils in some of our schools very difficult to deal with – which the recent GTC survey suggested was a major reason why up to 40% of young teachers do not choose to remain in the teaching profession. We may come in contact with children from severely dysfunctional families. But we need to see children in a positive way rather than negative one.

“So who or what has created the social climate in which such behaviour has been allowed to flourish? The answer is adults.

“Parents have to take their share of responsibility, but so have adults that comprise governments; adults who vote for governments; adults that control the media; adults who try to commercialise children and sell them things that are not beneficial to their well-being; adults who promote the cult of celebrity; adults who promote greedy, selfish behaviour; those adults who don’t understand what community is.

“We need to be fully aware of the roles and responsibilities of adults in creating the environment in which children grow.

“Those of you in school are expected to compensate not just for the shortcomings of parents, but also for the pressures which adult society is permitted to impose upon young people.

“So what about the parents? What does the government say about them? Does it tell them, as it tells schools, what they should be doing for their children? Is it going to measure the performance of parents and publish local league tables to show how they’re doing? Are they going to be held accountable for the kind of people their children grow into? Of course not – but schools are.

“The children’s agenda can’t exist outside of a vision for the whole of our society. So the government needs to articulate what sort of a society it’s trying to create – and to share it with us. And that has to include the responsibilities that we all bear, adults, parents and teachers alike.”

Philip Parkin, General Secretary, Voice: the union for education professionals.

Click here for a copy of the General Secretary's speech in full.