Kids Count at the Conservative Party Conference

Education

The fringe meeting hosted by teachers’ union the NASUWT at the Conservative Party Conference was an event I was eager to attend. I was interested to see if newly appointed Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, would either move away or support the ideas formulated by Michael Gove - whom she replaced. Morgan joined Chris Keats, the union’s general secretary, on the topic of Beyond 2015: Reclaiming the Classroom. Chris Keats spoke of similar topics that she addressed with Labour education minister Tristram Hunt, a week before.

Chris Keats began by highlighting the common goal of both the government and teachers – providing children with an inspiring education – to which Nicky Morgan wholeheartedly agreed. NASUWT’s emphasis was specifically on cutting down head teacher autonomy and significantly reducing the amount of bureaucracy for teachers. This is something that Keats believes would make a difference to teacher morale and the actual learning in the classroom. With teachers spending increasingly longer hours on filling out forms for inspections and submitting lesson plans, they are becoming stressed and tired, she said – emotions that lead to inefficient lessons.

While Michael Gove was less sympathetic to this issue, Nicky Morgan spoke of it being vital in her priorities for education. She called the workload “shocking and sobering” and in admiration called teacher’s “heroes”, something that went down well in a room full or current and retired teachers.

Nicky Morgan also put emphasis on caring about all schools, not just academies and free schools, while also commenting on plans to increase vocational training: although not as much as Labour did. In both Nicky Morgan and Chris Keats’s speeches they commented on their aim to empower, inspire and brighten young people’s futures.

I think there is a greater need for “young people’s voices”. I cannot place enough emphasis on the power and knowledge young people have. We know what we want from education; we can be perceptive and helpful in recognising problems with structural changes as well as coming up with solutions to fix them; we can tell you which groups are being neglected and what they need to be addressed. All you need to do is ask us.  

Sanam is blogging on behalf of Kids Count, a think-tank focused on the practical rather than the theoretical. Find out more at www.kidscount.org.uk