Good afternoon everyone, 

Conference. I want to start by saying thank you. 

Thank you for the courage and reliance that you’ve shown over the last two years. 

Thank you for your perseverance, your commitment, and your leadership. 

And thank you for creating fantastic environments which allow young people to learn and thrive. 

I’d also like to thank you for offering to buy me a drink in the bar later. That’s very kind of you. At least we all waited until it was legal to do so.    

Joking aside, I wanted you to know how grateful I am, and how much I recognise the extraordinary efforts you and your teams go to in making your schools the amazing places that they are. 

It so hard at the moment that your efforts are astonishing.  

It’s not simply the continuing Covid pressures, the continuing lack of money, high stakes accountability, the quality of inspection, the recruitment and retention crisis, the long hours, or the lack of pay….. 

I could go on… 

And believe me I will…. 

But it is also the absolute failure of political leadership.  

In Northern Ireland it’s been 84 days since the government collapsed for a second time, we can only hope that the elections due in a few days’ time will produce a basis for progress.  

In Wales we continue to be obsessed with a bloated and ineffective middle tier that gets in the way rather than supports what people need.  

And in Westminster, well where do I start?  

Let me first reiterate that NAHT jealously protects its political independence so what follows is not party political, it is a complaint and a description of why the failure of an out of touch government is making the job of producing well rounded young adults ready to play a full role in society so difficult.  

The basics taught in school are not how to write and how to count. The first things are self-regulation, good behaviour, decency, honesty, and integrity.   Things that are hard to observe in the UK government right now.  

I am not that angry that we all obeyed the rules at the most desperate of times while our leaders partied. In the scheme of things, the offence of having a glass of wine and a slice of cake is minor but for the prime minister of the county to mislead us about it, repeatedly is unforgiveable and clearly in breach of the standards of our democratic institutions.   

And I am not falling for this nonsense about how time has moved on, he has apologised, there are bigger issues now.   

If we cannot trust our leaders to tell the truth about cake, how can we trust that we will be told the truth about war, how can we trust that we will be told the truth about refugees, how can we trust that we will be told the truth about the economy, the progress of the pandemic, and.the governments ambitions for education.  
 
And it gets worse…. 

MPs have a basic obligation to protect the institutions of democracy. By failing to act on the lack of veracity for party political reasons they erode our great democracy and corrupt it in front of voters and in front of young people. All those failing to call out their bad behaviour should be ashamed of themselves.  

And then comes the ridiculous attempts to evade and hide the depth of the wrongdoing. And of course the targets are the very public servants that saw the country through the crisis.  

According to Michael Fabricant MP, you were all off having a party in the staff room at the end of every day. What utter nonsense! You worked hard to ensure the schools were some of the most tightly regulated places in the country, and you, all of you, made sure that you were fantastic role models within your communities.  

Anybody that knows anything about school realises they are places for children and therefore in contrast to Westminster there is not an alcohol culture throughout the school system. 

And why am I so angry, because even more simple than that, you were also exhausted, so emotionally drained, spending so much time away from your own families it wouldn't have occurred to you to reopen a staff room that you'd closed for safety reasons for people to have a cheeky drink. 

A ridiculous assertion, made in a ridiculous attempt to defend the indefensible made by a member of an increasingly ridiculous looking government. 

This all matters because young people can see this playing out before their very eyes. And I know that your efforts to make sure young people understand the basics of self-regulation, good behaviour, decency, honesty, and integrity become so much more difficult against that backdrop.   

Like the rest of us, young people see on the television every day the appalling scenes from Ukraine. And before that the difficult scenes from Afghanistan and the difficult scenes from Syria. They also see refugees, desperate humans, arriving on our shores in rubber boats from France. And they see the complete lack of compassion, the complete lack of humanity demonstrated by our government in the way we deal with these issues. Young people are not stupid; they also see and hear the difficult debates about immigration and are inquisitive. But you are not allowed to teach young people about this in a balanced way. The rhetoric from government wants to portray you as trendy lefties who wish to indoctrinate young people. What utter tosh! You will teach young people about how to interrogate these issues well and draw their own conclusions. You have been doing this well for years, you will do it in a balanced way, I trust you to do that, government should trust you to do that, they should simply get out of your way. 

And it's not just desperate families coming from abroad that should be occupying our minds. The rising incidence of poverty and child poverty are a blight on the governments record. Hungry children with chaotic lives at home are difficult to teach and difficult to care for. And it doesn't matter how many alliances, how many task forces or how many discussion groups you have we simply need to care for people properly and make sure young people have food in their bellies. The government likes to boast that we have the fastest growing economy in the G7. Again, another statement that might not withstand the test of scrutiny, but we do have one of the richest economies in the world and we can afford to make sure children coming to school have the basics they need to be ready to learn. 

As you walked into the conference today you would have seen this year’s theme. Three very important words compassion, humanity, and solidarity. Three things the education profession has in abundance.  

This  theme was chosen by our incoming president Paul Gosling, andif you're ever lucky enough to go and visit Paul’s school near Exeter, you will see the fantastic work he and his team do every day demonstrating those values.  

Compassion. Humanity. Solidarity. I can’t think of three words that resonate so clearly when we think about what fuels our profession, or our trade union. 

Compassion. Humanity. Solidarity. It’s almost an unspoken credo for everything we do. After all, who of us can think of any genuine educationalist who isn’t driven by the principles of compassion and humanity?  

We care. Our profession cares. 

We care about our pupils.  

We care about their families. 

We care about the communities that our schools serve. 

And we care about education, and how it shapes society. 

But we also care about each other. And stand side-by-side in solidarity with other school leaders. That’s why you’re here today. 

Everyone in this room already knows that when school leaders support each other, we achieve more, we learn more and we go further, faster. I believe that’s why so many school leaders are so well attuned to the principles of trade unionism.  

It’s in our blood, and it’s what we do. 

Of course, we don’t care about everything. 

We don’t care for forgotten promises, half-baked solutions, or superficial soundbites. 

We don’t care for change for the sake of it, being asked to meet arbitrary targets or the constant moving of goalposts. 

And we don’t care for the politics of division interfering with what we stand for and how we do our jobs. But more on all of this shortly. 

I mentioned Ukraine earlier.  I’ve no doubt that like me, many of you have watched on in horror at the bloodshed and destruction which continues to bring devastation to its people. History will define governments on how they acted during such crises, and this administration’s hesitance in welcoming those affected by the war does not reflect the values of compassion, humanity, and solidarity that I know many of you and your colleagues have shown when children from war torn countries have joined your school. It’s rather a pity we can’t mandate our country’s leaders to go back to school, so you can teach them all a thing or two about leadership.  

And if you arrive in a boat, you will be shipped off to Rwanda, zero compassion, zero humanity. I just wat to pay tribute here to the civil servants at the Home Office who through their unions are challenging the policy through the courts as they cannot contemplate having to implement such inhuman regulations.  

Sadly, we’ve seen the same inertia when it comes to tackling child poverty. Four in five of our members have seen an increase in the number of children coming to school hungry over the last five years, and the silence from government has been absolutely deafening. And while he should be applauded for his efforts, it shouldn’t take a premier league footballer to force a response on such a critical issue. 

Conference. As I begin my second term as your general secretary I could not feel more energised to work alongside you in navigating the landscape that’s laid out in front of us. At no time in history has there been a greater need for a strong school leaders’ union to be commanding the attention of a government who, despite their own beliefs, need to start listening to the experts. 

Today I want to talk to you about ambition, something I know you all have for your schools in spades, and I want to invite the government to embrace that ambition and project it back to us in its own plans, which have lacked the vision and the substance that school leaders across the country have been hoping for. For an administration that likes to talk about opportunity, they’re guilty of missing an awful lot of them so far. 

The government’s recent levelling up white paper was a prime example of this. What started off as a seemingly admirable effort to tackle the worst consequences of inequality in society were reduced to a set of proposals lacking the depth, imagination and investment needed to do so. If the government were serious about ending regional deprivation they would spend money on doing so. And how can we have a serious conversation about levelling up without any significant investment in education? 

Words without deeds are meaningless. It may be called a white paper but that doesn’t mean the pages should be blank of all meaning. 

Sadly, we’re seeing this pattern occurring frequently, with the government using big words and exiting slogans to dress up the thin gruel that lies under the surface. And this brings me on to the government’s recent white paper for schools. 

Imagine having a blank canvas to design the future of education. Someone once said that the best way to predict the future was to create it, and that’s exactly what was on offer with this opportunity. I know what we’d do, what you’d do, if given the same chance, because you tell me all the time. You’d invest heavily in the early years, and you’d create a meaningful package of support to lift up our young people from birth to the end of their education. . You would think about the elements of education that instil a love of learning and create a toolbox of resources to ensure everyone found themselves on a level playing field. 

But instead, we’re left with another debate about school structures.  

We know we cannot turn our back on the  academisation agenda, there is great practice going on in all school structures and our job is to make sure that they are designed in a way that helps you get on with the job. We will release the details of a recent survey of members tomorrow. It confirms what we know. Schools that saw advantages in a MAT that moved on their own terms benefit. But many are yet to be convinced.     

I want to reiterate that NAHT continues to believe that the choice as to whether a school becomes part of an academy should sit firmly with the governing bodies of each and every school. However, we are not naïve. We know the government aren’t comfortable with the ‘messy’ nature of the current set-up and want a trust-led system. And it would be helpful if they could ‘fess up that this objective was about tidying things up and stopped suggesting it is the only way to improve  pupil outcomes. I don’t much fancy the prospect of another meandering philosophical debate with the government about academisation, and to be honest, neither do you. Instead, we need to find a way of meaningfully engaging with that discussion so we can help steer the outcomes and not get left on the side-lines. 

Our own Secretary of State, Nadim Zahawi, gave two important undertakings when he spoke at our policy conference last October. He said he would be led by the evidence, and he also said he would not set an arbitrary date for joining a strong family of schools. 

To be fair to him, and in a welcome contrast to some of my complaints my earlier about government he has not broken those undertakings. He has sailed close to wind. The talk of all schools being on the journey by 2030 looks like a deadline to me but he has not taken powers of compulsion. And the continued statement that the evidence shows this is THE route to improvement is at best controversial. That’s why I am disappointed that the government has not been able to field a minister for our conference. Today was an opportunity to provide reassurance and set the foundations for the discussions we will need to have to ensure the evolution of the school system delivers for the country.  

Our message is simple, develop a compelling case not a case for compulsion.  

The White Paper also sets out its ambition to ensure ‘an excellent teacher’ for every child. This is of course admirable and there are other parts of the paper which also give you a sense of genuine ambition, but once again, where is the commitment to providing the support needed to make this happen? Schools urgently need significant investment and an increase in the provision to support services. Without this, it’s hard to understand how any of the ambition laid out in the paper can be realised. 

We are of course, encouraged, that there is at least a conversation happening between the government and the profession. I believe that process to be ongoing and genuine, and I believe that this association have the ear of the department when it comes to making the views of school leaders known.  

Our challenge over the coming year, is to make our argument clearly enough, loudly enough and frequently enough to the point where it can cut through the noise and be accepted as a universal truth; that’s where we need the help of every single one of you.  

The government, the press and the general public will only tolerate hearing the same message from me so many times, despite my dulcet tones, good looks, and irresistible modesty.  

People want to hear from leaders on the front line. So, tell your stories, explain your challenges in your communities, organise within your branches, and let’s get the message out to government loud and clear that school leaders are fit to burst with ambition for their schools, but we desperately need the investment to make that a reality. 

I’d also like to take this opportunity to invite government to have a big conversation with us about the purpose of education, something which wasn’t laid out in the recent white paper. To the department for education, I’d say this: Let’s stop tinkering around the edges with tabloid catnip about the length of the school day  and have a big, meaningful and comprehensive discussion between ministers and school leaders about what we want education to achieve for society, and let’s add the detail on after that. It’s a genuine offer.  

Of course, creating a great system doesn’t just require investment in schools, but investment in the people that work in them too, and this needs urgent attention. ‘An excellent teacher for every child’, sounds less realistic when you consider the series of pay cuts against inflation that teachers and school leaders have continually suffered from since 2010. This has of course had a huge impact on teaching being able to compete with other graduate careers as a viable choice of profession, and this has since been compounded by the massive cost of living increase the country now finds itself in. It’s absolutely crucial the government steps in before further damage is done.  

The recent suggestion of a starting salary for new teachers of thirty thousand pounds a year is of course a step in the right direction, but this absolutely needs to be matched with equivalent increases for all current teachers and school leaders. A situation where higher salaries for early career teachers is being subsidised by lower uplifts for experienced teachers and leaders is neither helpful nor acceptable. 

The constraints placed upon the STRB have eroded confidence in the process and you are a beat away from all the industrial difficulties the review body process is designed to avoid. Wake up government this is a crisis you can avoid.  

But its not just about pay.  

We can’t ignore the mental health crisis that we’re going through in this country and the impact that is having on both the learning and teaching sides of the divide. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our outgoing president Tim Bowen for spearheading such a powerful campaign about staff well-being during his year in office, and I’m sure many of the resources and services signposted within that campaign have been a great help to many of our members.  

But NAHT can’t do all the work. We need government to step up to ensure teachers and school leaders can access all the support they need in doing what can be a stressful, emotionally demanding, yet crucial job, we need our teachers and school leaders to be the best possible versions of themselves so they can help our young people to be the best possible versions of themselves. 

Conference, I’m almost out of time and we’ve got plenty of motions to debate but what kind of speech to school leaders is complete without mentioning Ofsted? I’ll be brief, (and it would be nice if they could occasionally return the favour) but I want to let you know I’ve been listening to what many of you have told me, and the overall feedback I have been receiving is that the inspectorate have at times been somewhat tone deaf to the reality of what schools have been through and continue to go through, with inspectors often suggesting that ‘they don’t want to hear about covid’, almost as if covid is being used as some sort of excuse.  

Well, let me be clear. It was not an excuse, it’s a crisis. A crisis which school leaders were at the coal face for and saw them having to make complicated decisions in the space of minutes, deliver huge changes to educational provision, deal with issues of critical illness amongst both staff and pupils, and communicate last minute changes to guidance while still trying to digest it themselves. The fact that schools continued to operate at a time when so many elements of society shut down is nothing short of miraculous and teachers and school leaders should be commended for making it happen.  

Rather than brush it aside, I implore Ofsted to fully reflect on the context which has led to where schools find themselves now. How else can you achieve a proper picture of what success looks like or how far a school has come? 

Conference, I stood before you in October  of last year and we talked about our hopes for education recovery. I remain hopeful, and I remain optimistic that through a meaningful dialogue with government, we can highlight the key areas that need their attention, but it’s hard not to feel frustrated when we’re met with the right noises but without the concrete plans to back it up.  

This profession is full to the brim with people who have the talent, ideas, and energy to take education forward, now we need the resources to do it. 

Conference, we all know this government enjoys a good party, so why don’t they give the rest of us something to celebrate? 

• Fully funded schools 
• An end to child poverty 
• Well-resourced support services for pupils and families 

• More money for the early years 
• Pay restoration  
• And a system we all agree upon 

 

I genuinely don’t think it’s a big ask for what we will get in return. So, let’s keep demanding it until we get it. 

Colleagues, enjoy the conference. Engage with the debates, vote with your whole heart, and if you see any of your peers looking a little worse for wear in the morning, please remember to treat them with the compassion, humanity, and solidarity I know you’re capable of. 

For now, let’s get to work.