All members should have received recently a booklet from the Union setting out the terms of our action on bureaucracy. Most of this has been said before, but is nevertheless an important reminder at a time when workload is, for a variety of reasons, again on the increase.
In 1998 the NUT balloted its members to refuse to undertake certain tasks. Members voted in favour of this action, and it is still in effect. So members are protected by legal ballot from all of the activities which are listed in the booklet.
The action covers:
If you are being expected to carry out tasks which are covered by the ballot,
OR if your school management is not complying with the terms of the ballot,
OR if you are being asked to do things which seem to be unreasonable but are not on the above list, please get in touch with the Union Office.
The Bureaucracy ballot provides an effective, legal means of resisting the imposition of unreasonable workloads, and is being applied successfully in many schools.
For those of you who were assessed last summer as ‘meeting the standards’, all the hard work has finally paid off, with the pay rise and the back pay to September 2000 appearing in last month’s pay. For those who were assessed as ‘not having met the standards’, you should be receiving any day now a letter from CEA detailing the review process, which was established as a result of the NUT’s victory in the courts. You are also invited to a meeting at 4.30pm on Tuesday 13th February at the Union office, to discuss the details of the process.
Assessors are returning to Bradford to verify applications at schools which were not in the vanguard process. If you are unlucky enough to be picked as part of the sample that the assessor wants to look at in detail it is important to co-operate without undertaking an unreasonable workload. As you will probably be asked to assemble the evidence at relatively short notice it would be reasonable to ask for some non-contact time in which to do it. If you are lucky enough to escape the sample offer what help you can to the unlucky ones – if they do well it effects the way all applications are viewed.
Assessors may ask for the evidence you initially cited to underpin the statements you made on the form. Make this as specific as possible and direct the Assessor to relevant evidence by e.g. post-it notes if you are handing in a large folder.
They may also ask for evidence about standards that they feel you did not cover fully on your form. If this happens it is worth seeking advice from colleagues about the kind of evidence they used. We can also give some general advice about what is being looked for to cover specific standards.