Keith Sinclair, delegate, Hull NUT (personal capacity) DELEGATES at a special one day National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference have firmly rejected performance related pay. The conference had been called by the leadership of the NUT on order to gain support for changes to the long standing pay policy of Britain's largest teaching union. The debate at the conterence was heated and occasionally shambolic. The President of the unlon closed the before any final decision was taken on an action strategy that could have produced pay increases tor teachers The leadership were defeated on all the key votes.
The left won the idea of a flat rate plus cost of living claim as opposed to 10 per cent for all which would have given bigger increases to the highest paid teachers. Conference also rejected explicitly any direct or indirect link between appraisal and teachers' pay.
The key debate was over the issue of 'recognised competencies'. The leadership wanted members to accept that teachers would only annual pay increases if they were deemed to have passed annual 'competencies. New Labour proposes to make annual guaranteed pay rises for teachers a thing of the past.
NUT General Secretary Doug McAvoy helleves that Naw Labour wishes to introduce performance related pay and therefore thinks the union should agree to a softer version to thwart the government.
But any system of conditional pay rises is unfair. For example, teachers at an inner-city school have to cope with social problems that leafy suburban schools rarely conc across.
Who is more competent? The teacher with the best exam results? With the best record of student attendance?
No system căn cope with the massive disparities between schools and the circumstances of an individual school at any particular ume. The government is committed maintaining Tory spending levels but wants to give the impression of providing more for services such as education and health. To give all teachers a decent rise would increase education spending significantly.
Given their unwillingness to spend more, the Government is forced to rely on gimmicks such as Advanced Skills Teachers who will be paid up to £40,000 a year.
Their pay levels will attract the headlines but big rises for a handful will only store up resentment amongst the mass of teachers.
Attempts to link pay rises to performance are an attempt to line teachers up behind the Government's attack on allegedly weak and incompetent teachers.
What happens next remains to be seen. No formal decisions were made at the conference as it was closed down before the key final votes were taken. Activists need to continue to take up the arguments around performance Executive Committee (NEC) amounted to a complete walkover by the right-wing - albeit on a pathetically low turn-out.
The 'Moderate' and 'Membership First' groupings won the presidency, vice-presidencies and fortythree of the forty-six seats on the NEC.
The only 'left' candidates elected were from the bureaucratic and opportunistic ex-PTC 'Unity' group, which shared a common slate with Left Unity but didn't mention Left Unity candidates in its campaign material.
Left Unity has naturally sought explanations for this disastrous (even by normal standards) result, which will leave the right-wing in control until May 2000. Suggestions of ballot-rigging are gaining increasing credence.
In the Inland Revenue, for instance, the same electorate simultaneously voted for its Group Executive Committee and for its own section of the NEC.
In the GEC elections, where the scrutineer was that previously used by PTC, the left increased its vote and the right did badly, whereas in the NEC elections -